The generalized conditional symmetry method is applied to study the reduction to finite-dimensional dynamical systems and construction of exact solutions for certain types of nonlinear partial differential equations which have many physically significant applications in physics and related sciences. The exact solutions of the resulting equations are derived via the compatibility of the generalized conditional symmetries and the considered equations, which reduces to solving some systems of ordinary differential equations. For some unsolvable systems of ordinary differential equations, the dynamical behavior and qualitative properties are also considered. To illustrate that the approach has wide application, the exact solutions of a number of nonlinear partial differential equations are also given. The method used in this paper also provides a symmetry group interpretation to some known results in the literature which cannot be obtained by the nonclassical symmetry method due to Bluman and Cole.

We prove several growth theorems for solutions of certain nonlinear second-order difference equations.

We show the strongly stable convergence of some non-collectively-compact approximations of compact operators. Special attention is devoted to Anselone's singularity subtraction discretization of certain singular integral operators. Numerical experiments are provided.

At the ANZIAM conference in Hobart in February 2018, there were several talks on the solution of Laplace problems in multiply connected domains by means of conformal mapping. It appears to be not widely known that such problems can also be solved by the elementary method of series expansions with coefficients determined by least-squares fitting on the boundary. (These are not convergent series; the coefficients depend on the degree of the approximation.) Here we give a tutorial introduction to this method, which converges at an exponential rate if the boundary data are sufficiently well-behaved. The mathematical foundations go back to Runge in 1885 and Walsh in 1929. One of our examples involves an approximate Cantor set with up to 2048 components.

The method of Coullet and Spiegel [3], which derives ordinary differential equations describing the time evolution of a system of partial differential equations when the system is near critical, is applied to some simple problems. These problems serve to illustrate simply many features of the method.

In this paper we develop the Laplace-transform method to solve initial-value problems for the velocity potential describing the generation of infinitesimal capillary-gravity waves in a motionless liquid with an inertial surface composed of uniformly distributed floating particles. The two principal problems considered are the forced motions due to a submerged wave source and an immersed vertical plane wave-maker, which begin to operate in a time-dependent manner at a given instant. The transformed potentials are calculated using techniques similar to those which are effective in traditional time-harmonic problems with a free surface. The steady-state development in the time-harmonic example taken demonstrates the existence of outgoing progressive waves under any inertial surface, in contrast to the case of no surface tension when such waves cannot propagate under an inertial surface that is too heavy. The solution is also noted of the Cauchy-Poisson problem for the free motion flowing an intial elevation of the inertial surface, which is obtained by the same method.

Second order necessary and sufficient conditions are given for a class of optimization problems involving optimal selection of a measurable subset from a given measure subspace subject to set function inequalities. Relations between twice-differentiability at Ω and local convexity at Ω are also discussed.

Oxygen index methods have been widely used to measure the flammability of polymeric materials and to investigate the effectiveness of fire-retardants. Using a dynamical systems framework we show how a limiting oxygen index can be identified with an appropriate bifurcation.

The effectiveness of fire-retardants in changing the limiting oxygen index is calculated by unfolding the bifurcation point with a suitable non-dimensionalised variable, which depends upon the mode of action of the additive. In order to use this procedure it is essential the model is non-dimensionalised so as to retain the variables of interest as distinct continuation parameters.

Endemic infectious diseases constantly circulate in human populations, with prevalence fluctuating about a (theoretical and unobserved) time-independent equilibrium. For diseases for which acquired immunity is not lifelong, the classic susceptible–infectious–recovered–susceptible (SIRS) model provides a framework within which to consider temporal trends in the observed epidemiology. However, in some cases (notably pertussis), sustained multiannual fluctuations are observed, whereas the SIRS model is characterized by damped oscillatory dynamics for all biologically meaningful choices of model parameters. We show that a model that allows for “boosting” of immunity may naturally give rise to undamped oscillatory behaviour for biologically realistic parameter choices. The life expectancy of the population is critical in determining the characteristic dynamics of the system. For life expectancies up to approximately $50$ years, we find that, even with boosting, damped oscillatory dynamics persist. For increasing life expectancy, the system may sustain oscillatory dynamics, or even exhibit bistable behaviour, in which both stable point attractor and limit cycle dynamics may coexist. Our results suggest that rising life expectancy may induce changes in the characteristic dynamics of infections for which immunity is not lifelong, with potential implications for disease control strategies.

In contrast to mono-constrained flows with N degrees of freedom, binary constrained flows of soliton equations, admitting 2 × 2 Lax matrices, have 2N degrees of freedom. Currently existing methods only enable Lax matrices to yield the first N pairs of canonical separated variables. An approach for constructing the second N pairs of canonical separated variables with N additional separated equations is introduced. The Jacobi inversion problems for binary constrained flows are then established. Finally, the separability of binary constrained flows together with the factorization of soliton equations by the spatial and temporal binary constrained flows leads to the Jacobi inversion problems for soliton equations.

An integro-differential equation of Prandtl's type and a collocation method as well as a collocation-quadrature method for its approximate solution is studied in weighted spaces of continuous functions.

Variable structure systems with sliding modes have been widely discussed and used in many different fields of applications. The precise behaviour at a switching surface is complicated because there the system is non-analytic. The damped simple harmonic oscillator with a nonlinear variable structure is discretised and analysed in detail, revealing the occurrence and structure of pseudo-sliding modes which give insight to the corresponding sliding modes for the continuous system. Necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained and the analysis illustrated with graphs from numerical solutions.

The main result of this paper offers a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an additive selection of a weakly compact convex set-valued map defined on an amenable semigroup. As an application, we obtain characterisations of the solutions of several functional inequalities, including that of quasi-additive functions.

We derive local transformations mapping radially symmetric nonlinear diffusion equations with power law or exponential diffusivities into themselves or into other equations of a similar form. Both discrete and continuous transformations are considered. For the cases in which a continuous transformation exists, many additional forms of group-invariant solution may be constructed; some of these solutions may be written in closed form. Related invariance properties of some multidimensional diffusion equations are also exploited.

When a line sink is placed beneath the free surface of an otherwise quiescent fluid of infinite depth, two different flow types are now known to be possible. One type of flow involves the fluid being drawn down toward the sink, and in the other type, a stagnation point forms at the surface immediately above the position of the sink.

This paper investigates the second of these two flow types, which involves a free-surface stagnation point. The effects of surface tension are included, and even when small, these are shown to have a very significant effect on the overall solution behaviour. We demonstrate by direct numerical calculation that there are regions of genuine non-uniqueness in the nonlinear solution, when the surface-tension parameter does not vanish. In addition, an asymptotic solution valid for small Froude number is derived.

In this paper all three-stage third order (explicit) Runge-Kutta-Nyström (R-K-N) methods for y″ = f (x, y, y′) are presented. While determining particular methods we require that when these methods are applied to the test equation: y″ − (α + β) y ′ + αβy = 0, the measure of the relative error F, introduced by Rutishauser [4], should not deteriorate in the case of equal eigenvalues (β → α). Further, we require that when these methods are applied to special differential equations y″ = f(x, y) they should possess either of the two properties: (P1) a method remains of order three but is two-stage, (P2) a method remains three-stage but attains order four. We present new R-K-N methods which are stabilized in the sense of Ruthishauser [4] and which possess the property (P1). (There does not exist any three-stage third order R-K-N method which is stabilized and which possesses the property (P2).)

Quintic B-spline collocation schemes for numerical solution of the regularized long wave (RLW) equation have been proposed. The schemes are based on the Crank–Nicolson formulation for time integration and quintic B-spline functions for space integration. The quintic B-spline collocation method over finite intervals is also applied to the time-split RLW equation and space-split RLW equation. After stability analysis is applied to all the schemes, the results of the three algorithms are compared by studying the propagation of the solitary wave, interaction of two solitary waves and wave undulation.

Methods which make use of the differential equation ẋ(t) = −J(x)−1f(x), where J(x) is the Jacobian of f(x), have recently been proposed for solving the system of nonlinear equations f(x) = 0. These methods are important because of their improved convergence characteristics. Under general conditions the solution trajectory of the differential equation converges to a root of f and the problem becomes one of solving a differential equation. In this paper we note that the special form of the differential equation can be used to derive single and multistep methods which give improved rates of local convergence to a root.

The Faà di Bruno formulæ for higher-order derivatives of a composite function are important in analysis for a variety of applications. There is a substantial literature on the univariate case, but despite significant applications the multivariate case has until recently received limited study. We present a succinct result which is a natural generalization of the univariate version. The derivation makes use of an explicit integralform of the remainder term for multivariate Taylor expansions.

In this paper, by using critical point theory, we establish some results for the existence of periodic and subharmonic solutions to subquadratic discrete Hamiltonian systems.