The method of multiple scales: Asymptotic solutions and normal forms for nonlinear oscillatory problems

The method of multiple scales is implemented in Maple V Release 2 to generate a uniform asymptotic solution O(epsilon(r)) for & weakly nonlinear oscillator. In recent work, it has been shown that the method of multiple scales also transforms the differential equations into normal form, so the given algorithm can be used to simplify the equations describing the dynamics of a system near a fixed point. These results are equivalent to those obtained with the traditional method of normal forms which uses a near-identity coordinate transformation to get the system into the ''simplest'' form. A few Duffing type oscillators are analysed to illustrate the power of the procedure. The algorithm can be modified to take care of systems of ODEs, PDEs and other nonlinear cases. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limited