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
      
      and
      
      for all 
 and 
. Moreover, these functions are Lipschitz functions since
      
      and
      
By setting 
, 
, 
 and 
, we obtain
      
Therefore, the hypothesis of Theorem 3 holds true, and consequently, the coupled system of nonlinear proportional fractional differential equations of the Hilfer type (
30) with multi-point and integro-multi-strip boundary conditions (
31) and 
 and 
 given in Equation (
34) has least one solution 
 on the interval 
.
Remark 2. We cannot use Theorem 3 in case  as the function  is unbounded. On the other hand, in , we have , which contradicts the condition in Equation (20) in the statement of Theorem 1.    5. Conclusions
In this paper, we presented the criteria for ensuring the existence and uniqueness of solutions for a coupled system of 
 Hilfer fractional proportional differential equations complemented with nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point boundary conditions. We relied on the standard fixed-point theorems to establish the desired results, which were illustrated well by constructing numerical examples. Our results are novel and contribute to the existing literature on nonlocal boundary value problems for systems of nonlinear 
 Hilfer fractional proportional differential equations. It is worthwhile to point out that the results presented in this paper are wider in scope and produced a variety of new results as special cases. For instance, fixing the parameters in the nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point 
 Hilfer generalized proportional fractional system (
1), we obtained some new results as special cases associated with the following:
- •
- Integral multi-strip nonlocal  Hilfer fractional proportional systems of an order within  if  
- •
- Integral multi-point nonlocal  Hilfer fractional proportional systems of an order within  if  
- •
- Integral multi-strip nonlocal Hilfer fractional proportional systems of an order within  if  
- •
- Nonlocal integro-multi-strip and multi-point  Hilfer fractional systems of an order within  if  
Furthermore, some more new results can be recorded as special cases for different combinations of the parameters 
 and 
 involved in the system (
1). For example, by taking all values where 
 we obtain the results for a coupled system of nonlinear 
 Hilfer fractional proportional differential equations supplemented by the following nonlocal boundary conditions:
In a nutshell, the work established in this paper was of a more general nature and yielded several new results as special cases.