| dc.description.abstract | Many physical phenomena can be described by nonlinear models. The last few decades have seen an enormous growth of the applicability of nonlinear models and of the development of related nonlinear concepts. This has been driven by modern computer power as well as by the discovery of new mathematical techniques, which include two contrasting themes: (i) the theory of dynamical systems, most popularly associated with the study of chaos, and (ii) the theory of integrable systems associated, among other things, with the study of solitons.
In this dissertation, we study two nonlinear models. One is the 1-dimensional vibrating string satisfying wtt − wxx = 0 with van der Pol boundary conditions. We formulate the problem into an equivalent first order hyperbolic system, and use the method of characteristics to derive a nonlinear reflection relation caused by the nonlinear boundary conditions. Thus, the problem is reduced to the discrete iteration problem of the type un+1 = F (un). Periodic solutions are investigated, an invariant interval for the Abel equation is studied, and numerical simulations and visualizations with different coefficients are illustrated.
The other model is the Korteweg-de Vries-Burgers (KdVB) equation. In this dissertation, we proposed two new approaches: One is what we currently call First Integral Method, which is based on the ring theory of commutative algebra. Applying the Hilbert-Nullstellensatz, we reduce the KdVB equation to a first-order integrable ordinary differential equation. The other approach is called the Coordinate Transformation Method, which involves a series of variable transformations. Some new results on the traveling wave solution are established by using these two methods, which not only are more general than the existing ones in the previous literature, but also indicate that some corresponding solutions presented in the literature contain errors. We clarify the errors and instead give a refined result. | en |
