In this paper, we are concerned with the existence of the fully fourth-order boundary value problem
$$ \textstyle\begin{cases} u^{(4)}(t)=f(t, u(t), u'(t), u''(t), u'''(t)), \quad t\in [0, 1], \\ u(0)=u'(0)=u''(1)=u'''(1)=0 , \end{cases} $$
(1.1)
where
\(f:[0, 1]\times {\mathbb{R}}^{4}\to \mathbb{R}\) is continuous. This equation models the deformations of an elastic beam in equilibrium state, whose one end-point is fixed and the other is free, and in mechanics it is called cantilever beam equation. In the equation, the physical meaning of the derivatives of the deformation function
\(u(t)\) is as follows:
\(u^{(4)}\) is the load density stiffness,
\(u'''\) is the shear force stiffness,
\(u''\) is the bending moment stiffness, and
\(u'\) is the slope [
1‐
4].
For the special case of BVP (
1.1) that
f does not contain any derivative terms, namely the simply fourth-order boundary value problem
$$ \textstyle\begin{cases} u^{(4)}(t)=f(t, u(t)), \quad t\in [0, 1], \\ u(0)=u'(0)= u''(1)=u'''(1)=0, \end{cases} $$
(1.2)
and
f only contains first-order derivative term
\(u'\), namely the fourth-order boundary value problem
$$ \textstyle\begin{cases} u^{(4)}(t)=f(t, u(t), u'(t)), \quad t\in [0, 1], \\ u(0)=u'(0)= u''(1)=u'''(1)=0, \end{cases} $$
(1.3)
the existence of positive solutions has been discussed by some authors, see [
5‐
9]. The methods applied in these works are not applicable to BVP (
1.1) since they cannot deal with the derivative terms
\(u''\) and
\(u'''\).
The purpose of this paper is to obtain existence results of solutions to the fully fourth-order nonlinear boundary value problem (
1.1). For fully fourth-order nonlinear BVPs with the boundary condition in BVP (
1.1) or other boundary conditions, the existence of solution has discussed by several authors, see [
14‐
20]. In [
14], Kaufmann and Kosmatov considered a symmetric fully fourth-order nonlinear boundary value problem. They used a triple fixed point theorem of cone mapping to obtain existence results of triple positive symmetric solutions when
f satisfies some range conditions dependent upon three positive parameters
a,
b and
d. Since they did not give the method to determine these parameters, the range conditions are difficult to verify. The authors of [
15] used the method of lower and upper solutions to discuss the existence of solution of the fully fourth-order nonlinear boundary value problem
$$ \textstyle\begin{cases} u^{(4)}(t)=f(t, u(t), u'(t), u''(t), u'''(t)), \quad 0\le t\le 1, \\ u(0)=u'(1)=u''(0)=u'''(1)=0, \end{cases} $$
(1.5)
where the discussed problem has a pair of ordered lower and upper solutions. But they did not discuss how they found a pair of ordered lower and upper solutions. Under the case that
\(f(t, x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3})\) is sublinear growth on
\(x_{0}\),
\(x_{1}\),
\(x_{2}\),
\(x _{3}\), the existence of the following fully fourth-order boundary value problem:
$$ \textstyle\begin{cases} u^{(4)}(t)=f(t, u(t), u'(t), u''(t), u'''(t)), \quad 0\le t\le 1, \\ u(0)=u(1)=u''(0)=u''(1)=0 \end{cases} $$
(1.6)
is discussed in [
16]. In this case, using the method in [
16], we can obtain existence results for BVP (
1.1). Usually the superlinear problems are more difficult to treat than the sublinear problems. In [
17], the present author discussed the case that
\(f(t, x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3})\) may be superlinear growth on
\(x_{0}\),
\(x_{1}\),
\(x_{2}\),
\(x _{3}\) when nonlinearity
f is nonnegative by using the fixed point index theory in cones. In recent paper [
18], Dang and Ngo dealt with the solvability of BVP (
1.1) by using the contraction mapping principle. They showed that if there exists a region
$$ \mathcal{D}_{M}= \biggl\{ (t, x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3}) \Bigm| t\in [0,1], \vert x_{0} \vert \le \frac{M}{8}, \vert x_{1} \vert \le \frac{M}{6}, \vert x_{2} \vert \le \frac{M}{2}, \vert x_{3} \vert \le M \biggr\} $$
(1.7)
determined by a positive number
M such that nonlinearity
f satisfies
$$\begin{aligned}& \bigl\vert f(t, x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3}) \bigr\vert \le M, \end{aligned}$$
(1.8)
$$\begin{aligned}& \bigl\vert f(t, x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3})-f(t, y_{0}, y_{1}, y_{2}, y_{3}) \bigr\vert \le \sum_{i=0}^{3}c_{i} \vert x_{i}-y_{i} \vert \end{aligned}$$
(1.9)
for any
\((t, x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3})\),
\((t, y_{0}, y_{1}, y_{2}, y _{3})\in \mathcal{D}_{M}\), where
\(c_{0}\),
\(c_{1}\),
\(c_{2}\),
\(c_{3}\) are positive constants and satisfy
$$ q:=\frac{c_{0}}{8}+\frac{c_{1}}{6}+\frac{c_{0}}{2}+c_{3}< 1, $$
(1.10)
then BVP (
1.1) has a unique solution
u satisfying
$$ \bigl(t, u(t), u'(t), u''(t), u'''(t)\bigr)\in \mathcal{D}_{M}, \quad t \in [0, 1]. $$
(1.11)
See [
18, Theorem 2.2]. A similar result is built for BVP (1.6) in [
19] and for a fourth-order BVP of Kirchhoff type equation in [
20]. Dang and Ngo’s result can be applied to the superlinear equations, and it ensures the uniqueness of solution on
\(\mathcal{D}_{M}\). However, the key to the application of this result is how to determine the constant
M. For the general nonlinearity
f,
M is not easy to determine and the Lipschitz coefficients condition (
1.10) is not easy to satisfy. In this paper we shall discuss the general case that
f may be superlinear growth and have negative value.
We will use the method of lower and upper solutions to discuss BVP (
1.1). For BVP (
1.1), since the boundary conditions are different from BVP (
1.5), the definitions of lower and upper solutions are different from those in [
16] and the argument methods in [
16] are not applicable to BVP (
1.1). In Sect.
2, under
\(f(t, x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x _{3})\) increasing on
\(x_{0}\),
\(x_{1}\),
\(x_{2}\) and decreasing on
\(x_{3}\) in the domain surrounded by lower and upper solutions, we use a monotone iterative technique to obtain the existence of a solution between lower and upper solutions. In Sect.
3, under
\(f(t, x_{0}, x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3})\) without monotonicity on
\(x_{3}\), we use a truncating technique to prove the existence of a solution between lower and upper solutions. In Sect.
4, we use the lower and upper theorem built in Sect.
3 to obtain a new existence result of positive solution.