A new solution procedure for a nonlinear infinite beam equation of motion

Our goal of this paper is of a purely theoretical question, however which would be fundamental in computational partial differential equations: Can a linear solution-structure for the equation of motion for an infinite nonlinear beam be directly manipulated for constructing its nonlinear solution? Here, the equation of motion is modeled as mathematically a fourth-order nonlinear partial differential equation. To answer the question, a pseudo-parameter is firstly introduced to modify the equation of motion. And then, an integral formalism for the modified equation is found here, being taken as a linear solution-structure. It enables us to formulate a nonlinear integral equation of second kind, equivalent to the original equation of motion. The fixed point approach, applied to the integral equation, results in proposing a new iterative solution procedure for constructing the nonlinear solution of the original beam equation of motion, which consists luckily of just the simple regular numerical integration for its iterative process; i.e., it appears to be fairly simple as well as straightforward to apply. A mathematical analysis is carried out on both natures of convergence and uniqueness of the iterative procedure by proving a contractive character of a nonlinear operator. It follows conclusively, therefore, that it would be one of the useful nonlinear strategies for integrating the equation of motion for a nonlinear infinite beam, whereby the preceding question may be answered. In addition, it may be worth noticing that the pseudo-parameter introduced here has double roles; firstly, it connects the original beam equation of motion with the integral equation, second, it is related with the convergence of the iterative method proposed here. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).