1. Introduction
Fractional-order differential equations arise in the mathematical modeling of several engineering and scientific phenomena. Examples include physics, chemistry, robotics, signal and image processing, control theory and viscoelasticity (see the monographs in [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5]). In particular, nonlinear coupled systems of fractional-order differential equations appear often in investigations connected with anomalous diffusion [
6], disease models [
7] and ecological models [
8]. Unlike the classical derivative operator, one can find a variety of its fractional counterparts, such as the Riemann–Liouville, Caputo, Hadamard, Erdeyl–Kober, Hilfer and Caputo–Hadamard counterparts. Recently, a new class of fractional proportional derivative operators was introduced and discussed in [
9,
10,
11]. The concept of Hilfer-type generalized proportional fractional derivative operators was proposed in [
12]. For the detailed advantages of the Hilfer derivative, see [
13] and a recent application in calcium diffusion in [
14].
Many researchers studied initial and boundary value problems for differential equations and inclusions, including different kinds of fractional derivative operators (for examples, see [
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20]). In [
21], the authors studied a nonlocal initial value problem of an order within
involving a
Hilfer generalized proportional fractional derivative of a function with respect to another function. Recently, in [
22], the authors investigated the existence and uniqueness of solutions for a nonlocal mixed boundary value problem for Hilfer fractional
-proportional-type differential equations and inclusions of an order within
In [
23], the authors discussed the existence of solutions for a nonlinear coupled system of
Hilfer fractional differential equations of different orders within
complemented with coupled
Riemann–Liouville fractional integral boundary conditions given by
Here,
is the
Hilfer fractional proportional derivative operator of the order
and type
,
is a continuous function (or
is a multi-valued map),
is the fractional integral operator of the order
and
,
,
Very recently, in [
24], the authors considered a new boundary value problem consisting of a Hilfer fractional
-proportional differential equation and nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point boundary conditions of the form
where
denotes the
Hilfer fractional proportional derivative operator of the order
and type
,
is an increasing function with
for all
and
is a continuous function.
Motivated by the foregoing work on boundary value problems involving Hilfer-type fractional
-proportional derivative operators, in this paper, we aim to establish existence and uniqueness results for a class of coupled systems of nonlinear Hilfer-type fractional
-proportional differential equations equipped with nonlocal multi-point and integro-multi-strip coupled boundary conditions. To be precise, we investigate the following problem:
where
,
denote the Hilfer fractional
-proportional derivative operator of the order
and type
,
is an increasing function with
for all
and
are continuous functions.
Here we emphasize that system (
1) is novel, and its investigation will enhance the scope of the literature on nonlocal Hilfer-type fractional
-proportional boundary value problems. It is worthwhile to mention that the Hilfer fractional
-proportional derivative operators are of a more general nature and reduce to the Hilfer generalized proportional fractional derivative operators [
12] when
and
which unify the classical Riemann–Liouville and Caputo fractional derivative operators. Our strategy to deal with system (
1) is as follows. First of all, we solve a linear variant of system (
1) in Lemma 3, which plays a pivotal role in converting the nonlinear problem in system (
1) into a fixed-point problem. Afterward, under certain assumptions, we apply different fixed-point theorems to show that the fixed-point operator related to the problem at hand possesses fixed points. The first result (Theorem 1) shows the existence of a unique solution to system (
1) by means of Banach’s contraction mapping principle. In the second result (Theorem 2), the existence of at least one solution to system (
1) is established via the Leray–Schauder alternative. The last result (Theorem 3), relying on Krasnosel’skiĭ’s fixed-point theorem, deals with the existence of at least one solution to system (
1) under a different hypothesis. We illustrate all the obtained results with the aid of examples in
Section 4. In the last section, we describe the scope and utility of the present work by indicating that several new results follow as special cases by fixing the parameters involved in system (
1).
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In the following section, some necessary definitions and preliminary results related to our study are outlined.
Section 3 contains the main results for system (
1), while numerical examples illustrating these results are presented in
Section 4. The paper concludes with some interesting observations.
3. Main Results
Before proceeding for the existence and uniqueness results for the system (
1), we consider the following lemma associated with the linear variant of the coupled system of Hilfer-type fractional
-proportional differential equations considered in system (
1).
Lemma 3. Let and Then, is a solution to the following coupled, linear, nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point, Hilfer generalized proportional fractional system:if and only ifandwhereand Proof. From Lemma 2 with
we have
and
which yields
and
where
and
Using Equations (
9) and (
10) in the conditions
and
we obtain
and
since
and
Hence, Equations (
9) and (
10) take the forms
and
By inserting Equations (
11) and (
12) into the conditions
and
we obtain
and
In light of the notation (
8), we can express Equations (
13) and (
14) in the form of the following system:
where
By solving the system (
15) for
and
, we find that
Substituting the above values of
and
in Equations (
11) and (
12) leads to the solutions in Equations (
6) and (
7), respectively. The converse of the lemma can be established by direct computation. □
We denote the Banach space of all continuous functions from to endowed with the norm as Obviously, the space endowed with the norm is a Banach space.
In light of Lemma 3, we define an operator
as
where
and
For convenience, in the sequel, the following notations are used:
Existence of a Unique Solution
In what follows, we prove the uniqueness of the solutions to the system (
1) by applying Banach’s contraction mapping principle [
25].
Theorem 1. Assume that satisfy the following conditions:
There exist constants such that for all and
we haveand In addition, we suppose thatwhere are given in Equation (19). Then, the nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point Hilfer generalized proportional fractional system (1) has a unique solution on
Proof. We define
and
and consider the set
with
In the first step, it will be shown that
where the operator
is given by Equation (
16).
For
and using
we have
In a similar manner, we can obtain
In light of the foregoing inequalities, we have
which implies that
Now, for
and for any
we obtain
Similarly, it can be established that
It follows from Equations (
22) and (
23) that
Since
under the condition in Equation (
20), the operator
is a contraction. Therefore, the conclusion of Banach’s contraction mapping principle applies, and hence the operator
has a unique fixed point. As a consequence, there exists a unique solution to the nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point
Hilfer generalized proportional fractional system (
1). □
The following result is based on the Leray–Schauder alternative [
26]:
Theorem 2. Let be continuous functions such that the following condition holds:
There exist for and such that for any , we have
If and , where are given in Equation (19), then the nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point Hilfer generalized proportional fractional system (1) has at least one solution on . Proof. Observe that the operator
defined in Equation (
16) is continuous, owing to the continuity of functions
and
on
Next, we show that the operator
is complete continuous. We define
. Then, for all
, there exist
such that
and
. Therefore, for all
, we have
which implies that
Thus, we deduce that the operator is uniformly bounded.
Now, we establish that the operator
is equicontinuous. Let
with
. Then, we have
which implies that
as
independent of
Thus, the operator
is completely continuous under the Arzelá–Ascoli theorem.
Similarly, it can be shown that
as
independent of
Hence, the operator
is completely continuous.
Lastly, we verify that the set
is bounded. Let
. Then,
. Hence, for all
we have
Under assumption
we have
which imply that
Consequently, we have
where
Hence, the set
is bounded. Under the Leray–Schauder alternative, the operator
has at least one fixed point. Therefore, the nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point
Hilfer generalized proportional fractional system (
1) has at least one solution on
□
Our second existence result is based on Krasnosel’skiĭ’s fixed-point theorem [
27]:
Theorem 3. Let be continuous functions satisfying condition In addition, the following assumption holds:
There exist non-negative functions such that, for all
Then, the nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point Hilfer generalized proportional fractional system (1) has at least one solution on provided that Proof. In order to verify the hypothesis of Krasnosel’skiĭ’s fixed-point theorem [
27], we decompose the operator
as follows:
Let us set
and
and introduce the set
, with
As in the proof of Theorem 2, we can obtain that
As a consequence, it follows that
Hence,
Now, it will be proven that the operator
is a contraction mapping. For
and for any
we have
and hence
Consequently, we obtain
which, according to Equation (
25), implies that
is a contraction.
It remains to be verified that the operator
is completely continuous. Under the continuity of functions
and
, we deduce that the operator
is continuous. For all
, following the arguments employed in the proof of Theorem 2, we find
Thus, set is uniformly bounded.
Lastly, we show that set
is equicontinuous. Let
such that
. For all
, due to the equicontinuous property of operators
and
, we can show that
,
as
independent of
Consequently, set
is equicontinuous. Now, under the Arzelá–Ascoli theorem, the compactness property of operator
on
is established. Hence, under the conclusion of Krasnosel’skiĭ’s fixed-point theorem, the nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point
Hilfer generalized proportional fractional system (
1) has at least one solution on
□
4. Illustrative Examples
Example 1. Let us consider a coupled system of nonlinear proportional fractional differential equations of the Hilfer type:supplemented with multi-point and integro-multi-strip boundary conditions of the form Here, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and . Using these values, we find that , , , , , , , , , , , and .
For illustrating Theorem 1, let us take the Lipschitzian functions
and
on
defined by
Notice that
and
for all
,
,
and
. By setting the Lipschitz constants to
,
,
and
, we obtain
Clearly, all the assumptions of Theorem 1 are fulfilled, and hence its conclusion implies that the system (
30) with multi-point and integro-multi-strip boundary conditions (
31) and the functions
and
given in Equation (
32) has a unique solution on
We demonstrate the application of Theorem 2 by considering the following nonlinear non-Lipschitzian functions:
Note that
and
are bounded as
and
for all
and
. By fixing
,
,
,
,
and
, we obtain
and
Therefore, it follows with the conclusion of Theorem 2 that there exists at least one solution
on the interval
of the system (
30) with multi-point and integro-multi-strip boundary conditions (
31) and two nonlinear functions
and
given in Equation (
33).
Let us use the following functions for explaining the application of Theorem 3:
which are obviously bounded as