Abstract
In this paper, we discuss the existence and uniqueness of solutions for a new class of multi-point and integral boundary value problems of multi-term fractional differential equations by using standard fixed point theorems. We also demonstrate the application of the obtained results with the aid of examples.
1. Introduction
Fractional differential equations are found to be of great utility in improving the mathematical modeling of many engineering and scientific disciplines such as physics [1] bioengineering [2], viscoelasticy [3], ecology [4], disease models [5,6,7], etc. For applications of differential equations containing more than one fractional order differential operators, we refer the reader to Bagley-Torvik [8], Basset equation [9] to name a few.
Fractional order boundary value problems equipped with a variety of classical and non-classical (nonlocal) boundary conditions have recently been investigated by many researchers and the literature on the topic is now much enriched, for instance, see [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] and the references cited therein. There has been a special focus on boundary value problems involving multi-term fractional differential equations [22,23,24].
The objective of the present work is to develop the existence theory for multi-term fractional differential equations equipped with nonlocal multi-point boundary conditions. Precisely, we investigate the following boundary value problem:
where denote the Caputo fractional derivative of order , , are given continuous functions, are real constants with . One can characterize the first and second conditions in (2) as initial-nonlocal and nonlocl multi-point ones, while the last condition in (2) can be understood in the sense that the value of the unknown function x at the right-end point of the domain () is proportional to the average value of x on the sub-domain Existence and uniqueness results are established by using the classical Banach and Krasnoselskii fixed point theorems and Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative. Here, we emphasize that the results presented in this paper rely on the standard tools of the fixed point theory. However, their exposition to the given nonlocal problem for a multi-term (sequential) fractional differential equation produces new results which contributes to the related literature.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In Section 2 we recall some preliminary concepts of fractional calculus and prove a basic lemma, helping us to transform the boundary value problem (1) and (2) into a fixed point problem. The main existence and uniqueness results for the case are presented in details in Section 3. In Section 4 and Section 5 we indicate the results for the cases and respectively. Examples illustrating the obtained results are also included.
2. Basic Results
Before presenting some auxiliary results, let us recall some preliminary concepts of fractional calculus [25,26].
Definition 1.
LetThen the Riemann–Liouville fractional derivativeof orderexisting almost everywhere onis defined as
The Caputo fractional derivativeof orderis defined as
Remark 1.
Ifthen the Caputo fractional derivativeof orderexisting almost everywhere onis defined as
In the sequel, the Riemann–Liouville fractional integral and the Caputo fractional derivative with are respectively denoted by and .
Lemma 1.
[25] With the given notations, the following equality holds:
whereare arbitrary constants.
The following lemmas associated with the linear variant of problem (1) and (2) plays an important role in the sequel.
Lemma 2.
For anyand, the solution of linear multi-term fractional differential equation
supplemented with the boundary conditions (2) is given by
where
Proof.
Applying the operator on (4) and using (3), we get
where is an arbitrary constant. By the method of variation of parameters, the solution of (7) can be written as
where and are given by (6). Using in (8), we get
which together with the conditions and yields the following system of equations in the unknown constants and :
where
Solving the system (10)–(11) together with the notations (6), we find that
Substituting the value of and in (9), we obtain the solution (5). The converse of the lemma follows by direct computation. This completes the proof. □
We do not provide the proofs of the following lemmas, as they are similar to that of Lemma 2.
Lemma 3.
For anyand, the solution of linear multi-term fractional differential equation
supplemented with the boundary conditions (2) is given by
where
Lemma 4.
For anyand, the solution of linear multi-term fractional differential equation
supplemented with the boundary conditions (2) is given by
where
3. Existence and Uniqueness Results
Denote by the Banach space of all continuous functions from to endowed with the norm defined by . In relation to the problem (1) and (2) with , we define an operator by Lemma 2 as
where , and are defined by (6).
In the sequel, for the sake of computational convenience, we set
Now the platform is set to present our main results. In the first result, we use Krasnoselskii’s fixed point theorem to prove the existence of solutions for the problem (1) and (2).
Theorem 1.
(Krasnoselskii’s fixed point theorem [27]). Let Y be a bounded, closed, convex, and nonempty subset of a Banach space X. Let and be the operators satisfying the conditions: (i) whenever (ii) is compact and continuous; (iii) is a contraction mapping. Then there exists such that
In the forthcoming analysis, we need the following assumptions:
- , for all and
Theorem 2.
Proof.
Setting , we can fix
and consider . Introduce the operators and on as follows:
and
Observe that . For , we have
where we used (22). Thus . Using the assumptions together with (21), we show that is a contraction as follows:
Note that continuity of f implies that the operator is continuous. Also, is uniformly bounded on as
Now we prove the compactness of operator . We define Thus, for , we have
independent of x. Thus, is relatively compact on . Hence, by the Arzelá-Ascoli Theorem, is compact on . Thus all the assumption of Theorem 1 are satisfied. So, by the conclusion of Theorem 1, the problem (1) and (2) has at least one solution on . The proof is completed. □
Remark 2.
In the above theorem we can interchange the roles of the operatorsandto obtain a second result by replacing (21) by the following condition:
Now we apply Banach’s contraction mapping principle to prove existence and uniqueness of solutions for the problem (1) and (2).
Theorem 3.
Proof.
Let us define , and select to show that , where and is defined by (18). Using the condition and , we have
Then, for we obtain
which clearly shows that for any . Thus . Now, for and for each , we have
and are given by (20) and depend only on the parameters involved in the problem. In view of the condition , it follows that is a contraction. Thus, by the contraction mapping principle (Banach fixed point theorem), the problem (1) and (2) has a unique solution on . This completes the proof. □
The next existence result is based on Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative.
Theorem 4.
(Nonlinear alternative for single valued maps [28]). Let E be a Banach space, C a closed, convex subset ofU an open subset of C andSuppose thatis a continuous, compact (that is,is a relatively compact subset of C) map. Then either
- (i)
- F has a fixed point inor
- (ii)
- there is a(the boundary of U in C) andwith
We need the following assumptions:
- There exist a function and a nondecreasing function such that
- , is continuous function with and there exist constant with such that
- There exists a constant such that
Theorem 5.
Proof.
Consider the operator defined by (18). We show that maps bounded sets into bounded sets in . For a positive number , let be a bounded set in . Then we have
which yields
Next we show that maps bounded sets into equicontniuous sets of . Let with and where is a bounded set of . Then we obtain
which tends to zero independently of as . As satisfies the above assumptions, therefore it follows by the Arzelá-Ascoli theorem that is completely continuous.
The result will follow from the Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative once it is shown that there exists with for and
Let be such that for . Then, for we have
which implies that
In view of , there is no solution x such that . Let us set
The operator is continuous and completely continuous. From the choice of U, there is no such that for some . Consequently, by the nonlinear alternative of Leray–Schauder type [28], we deduce that has a fixed point which is a solution of the problem (1) and (2). □
Example 1.
Let us consider the following boundary value problem
subject the boundary condition
Here, , , , , , , , , , , is a fixed value in and
Clearly , and
where , Using the given values, we found
It is easy to check that and As all the condition of Theorem 2 are satisfied the problem (26) and (27) has at least one solution on . On the other hand, and thus there exists a unique solution for the problem (26) and (27) on by Theorem 3.
Example 2.
Here
Clearly
with , .
4. Existence Results for Problem (1) and (2) with
In view of Lemma 3, we can transform problem (1) and (2) into equivalent fixed point problem as follows:
where the operator is defined by
where , are defined by (14). We set
Now we present our main results for problem (1) and (2) with Since the methods for proof of these results are similar to the ones obtained in Section 3, so we omit the proofs.
Theorem 6.
Theorem 7.
Theorem 8.
Letbe a continuous function. Then the problem (1) and (2) withhas at least one solution onif,and the following condition hold:
Example 3.
Consider the sequential fractional differential equation
subject the boundary conditions (27).
Here
Clearly , and
where , Using the given values, we find that and
5. Existence Results for Problem (1) and (2) with
In view of Lemma 4, we can transform problem (1) and (2) into equivalent fixed point problem as follows:
where the operator is defined by
where , are defined by (17). We set
Here are the existence and uniqueness results for problem (1) and (2) with As argued in the last section, we do not provide the proofs for these results.
Theorem 9.
Theorem 10.
Theorem 11.
Letbe a continuous function. Then the problem (1) and (2) withhas at least one solution onif,and the following condition are satisfied:
Example 4.
Consider the following boundary value problem
subject the boundary condition
Here, , , , , , , , , , , is a fixed value in and
Clearly , and
where , Using the given values, it is found that and
6. Conclusions
We have presented a detailed analysis for a multi-term fractional differential equation supplemented with nonlocal multi-point integral boundary conditions. The existence and uniqueness results are given for all three cases depending on the coefficients of the multi-term fractional differential equation: (i) , (ii) and (iii) . Existence results are proved by means of Krasnoselskii fixed point theorem and Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative, while Banach contraction mapping principle is applied to establish the uniqueness of solutions for the given problem. The obtained results are well-illustrated with examples. Our results are new and enrich the literature on nonlocal integro-multipoint boundary problems for multi-term Caputo type fractional differential equations.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, B.A. and S.K.N.; Formal analysis, B.A., N.A., A.A. and S.K.N.; Funding acquisition, A.A.; Methodology, B.A., N.A., A.A. and S.K.N. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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