Research Article
Existence of Solutions for Fractional Boundary Value
Problem with Nonlinear Derivative Dependence
Wenzhe Xie,
1
Jing Xiao,
2
and Zhiguo Luo
1
1
Department of Mathematics, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan 410081, China
2
Department of Information Engineering, Guangdong Medical College, Dongguan, Guangdong 523808, China
Correspondence should be addressed to Jing Xiao; xjazyh@163.com
Received 16 February 2014; Revised 8 April 2014; Accepted 8 April 2014; Published 27 April 2014
Academic Editor: Robert A. Van Gorder
Copyright © 2014 Wenzhe Xie et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
We investigate the existence of solutions for fractional boundary value problem including both le and right fractional derivatives
by using variational methods and iterative technique.
1. Introduction
Fractional dierential equations appear naturally in a number
of elds such as physics, chemistry, biology, economics, con-
trol theory, signal and image processing, and blood ow
phenomena. During last decades, the theory of fractional
dierential equations is an area intensively developed, due
mainly to the fact that fractional derivatives provide an
excellent tool for the description of memory and hereditary
properties of various materials and processes (see [1–4]and
the references therein). erein, the composition of fractional
dierential operators has got much attention from many
scientists, mainly due to its wide applications in modeling
physical phenomena exhibiting anomalous diusion. Specif-
ically, the models involving a fractional dierential oscillator
equation, which contains a composition of le and right
fractional derivatives, are proposed for the description of the
processes of emptying the silo [5] and the heat ow through a
bulkhead lled with granular material [6], respectively. eir
studies show that the proposed models based on fractional
calculus are ecient and describe well the processes.
In the aspect of theory, the study of fractional bound-
ary value problem including both le and right fractional
derivatives has attracted much attention by using variational
methods [7–12].Itisnoteasytousethecriticalpointtheoryto
study the fractional dierential equations including both le
and right fractional derivatives, since it is oen very dicult
to establish a suitable space and a variational functional for
the fractional boundary value problem.
For the rst time, Jiao and Zhou in [7] showed that the
critical point theory is an eective approach to tackle the exis-
tence of solutions for the following fractional boundary value
problem:
𝑡
𝛼
𝑇
0
𝛼
𝑡
(
)
=∇
(
,
(
))
, a.e.∈
[
0,
]
,
(
0
)
=
(
)
=0,
(1)
where
0
𝛼
𝑡
and
𝑡
𝛼
𝑇
are the le and right Riemann-Liouville
fractional derivatives of order 0<≤1,respectively,:
[0,]×
𝑁
→is a given function satisfying some assump-
tions, and ∇(,)is the gradient of at .
In [8], by performing variational methods combined with
iterative technique, Sun and Zhang investigated the solvabil-
ity of the following fractional boundary value problem:
0
−𝛽
𝑥
(
)
+
𝑥
−𝛽
1
(
)
+
(
,
(
))
=0,
∈
(
0,1
)
,
(
0
)
=
(
1
)
=0,
(2)
where ∈(0,1), 0<=1−<1,
0
−𝛽
𝑥
,and
𝑥
−𝛽
1
denote
le and right Riemann-Liouville fractional integrals of order
,respectively,and:[0,1]×→is continuous.
Motivated by the above works and [13, 14], in this paper,
we attempt to use Mountain Pass theorem and iterative
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Abstract and Applied Analysis
Volume 2014, Article ID 812910, 8 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/812910