1. Introduction
Uncertain models are one of the most significant parts of the fuzzy analysis theory and have rapidly developed in the last decades. With this, recent theoretical and applied aspects have been discussed by many mathematicians, including measure, symmetric and control theories, radiation transfer in a semi-infinite atmosphere, and so forth. They are considered influential tools for modeling several real-life situations and phenomena in which uncertainty results from several factors such as measurement errors, deficient data, and initial guesses. Recently, numerous publications have shown that fractional differential equations (FDEs) are a powerful and applicable instrument to describe the exact results of physical, applied mathematics, and engineering phenomena such as control systems, aerodynamics, signal processing, bio-mathematical problems, and others [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6]. However, in some cases, the raw initial data are imprecise and could be replaced by uncertain initial data to obtain fuzzy FDEs. Therefore, fuzzy FDEs are crucial in fuzzy calculus and are a widespread model in various natural scientific areas, including population analysis, evaluation of weapon systems, civil engineering, and modeling in electro-hydraulics.
The concept of the fuzzy FDEs was first introduced by Agarwal et al. [
7], who investigated fuzzy solutions for a certain class of fuzzy FDEs under the Hukuhara differentiability in the sense of Riemann–Liouville differentiability. Thereafter, many researchers have investigated solutions of ordinary fuzzy DEs and fuzzy FDEs (for more details, we refer to [
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13]). In addition, some mathematicians showed an interest in the existence and uniqueness of solutions for fuzzy FDEs. The authors of [
14] proposed the existence and uniqueness of the solution to a fuzzy FDE under Hukuhara fractional Riemann–Liouville differentiability. Later, new and different techniques and methods were presented so that the existence and uniqueness of solutions for fuzzy FDEs were proved. Alikhani et al. [
15] also confirmed the results of the existence and uniqueness of nonlinear fuzzy fractional integral and integro-differential equations by using the technique of upper and lower solutions. Additionally, these authors examined some related results about the existence and uniqueness of solutions to fuzzy FDEs under Caputo type-2 fuzzy fractional derivative and the definition of Laplace transform of type-2 fuzzy number-valued functions [
16]. For instance, in [
17], Salahshour et al. recommended some novel and different results for the existence and uniqueness of solutions of fuzzy FDEs.
Providing exact solutions to fuzzy FDEs is a difficult task. As a result, it is necessary to develop a robust numeric–analytic approach to deal with the complications of uncertain models and attain a precise mathematical framework for processing fuzzy initial value problems (IVPs) [
18,
19,
20,
21]. This analysis aimed to apply a recent treatment method, called the residual power series (RPS) method, to provide fuzzy approximated analytical solutions for a class of fuzzy FDEs under the concept of strongly generalized differentiability. This concept was introduced and discussed by Bede and Gal [
22]. Later, it was developed and investigated (for more details see [
23,
24]). In fact, by utilizing strongly generalized differentiability, it is possible to find solutions for larger classes of fuzzy FDEs than by using other types of differentiability. More specifically, we here provide fuzzy approximated analytical solutions for the fuzzy fractional initial value problem (FFIVP) of the general form:
where
is the fuzzy Caputo fractional derivative of order
,
is a continuous fuzzy-valued function,
is an unknown fuzzy analytical function to be determined, and
, where
stands for the set of fuzzy numbers on a real line.
In 2013, the scholar Abu Arqub [
25] proposed the RPS as an effectively numeric–analytic approach and easily applied it to define the components of the suggested series solutions to a certain class of classical fuzzy DEs. Later, the RPS approach was developed for handling various kinds of FDEs [
26,
27,
28,
29]. This approach produces solutions to the given problem in the convergent generalized Taylor’s series formula without involving discretization, linearization, or perturbation [
30,
31,
32]. It may be applied directly to given problems by selecting an appropriate value for the initial guess approximation. Recently, applications of the RPS approach for the simulation and creation of analytical solutions of FDEs, partial FDEs, and fuzzy FDEs have become popular and diverse, and numerous real-world problems have been studied and analyzed using the RPS approach, such as fractional stiff systems [
33], time-fractional Fokker–Planck equations [
34], time-fractional Whitham–Broer–Kaup equations [
35], time-fractional Sharma–Tasso–Olever equation [
34], fractional Newell–Whitehead–Segel equation [
36], coupled fractional resonant Schrödinger equation [
37], fractional foam drainage equation [
38], and certain class of fractional systems of partial differential equations [
39].
Approximate analytic–numeric techniques are considered to deal with fuzzy models of fractional PDEs, systems of fractional ODEs, and delay differential models. However, fuzzy fractional differential equations have not been investigated using the fractional power series method. Motivated by this, the primary objective of this work was to provide approximate analytic numerical solutions to fuzzy fractional initial value problems (IVPs) utilizing the RPS. The current article is organized as follows:
Section 2 presents some of the well-known concepts and primary results of the fuzzy set theory and fuzzy fractional calculus theory.
Section 3 discusses the formulation of the FFIVP (1) in the parametric form. Some FFIVPs are considered to demonstrate the efficiency and applicability of the RPS scheme presented in
Section 4. Concluding remarks are outlined in
Section 5.
3. Fuzzy Fractional Initial Value Problems
In this section, we study a certain class of FFIVPs in the meaning of Caputo’s fuzzy H-differentiability throughout converting the main problem from the fuzzy environment into a crisp environment based on the differentiability type. Furthermore, we present an algorithm to solve the new system which consists of two fractional initial value problems (FIVPs).
The formulation of the target problem is the significant part of the procedure. Anyhow, to create the fuzzy solution of the FFIVPs, we reformulate (1) based on the type of differentiability in the
-level representation as follows:
where
, , and
, for , and .
For
, the
-solution of FFIVPs (1) is a fuzzy function
that has Caputo [
]-differentiable and satisfies the fuzzy FIVPs (1). The next algorithm (Algorithm 1) along with Theorem 1 assisted us to find these solutions, ignoring the fuzzy settings approach:
-solutions of FFIVPs (1), we considered the following cases: |
Case 1: Under Caputo [(1)-]-differentiable, the FFIVPs (1) converts to the following FIVPs system |
|
Then, we used the following procedure: |
|
Second: Ensure that and are valid level sets for each .
|
Third: Construct the (1)-solution, .
|
Case 2: Under Caputo [(2)-]-differentiable, the FFIVPs (1) converts to the following FIVPs system: |
|
Then, we performed the following procedure: |
|
Second: Ensure that .
|
Third: Construct the (2)-solution, .
|
Remark 3. Let and let be an -solution of FFIVPs (1) on . Then, and will be the solutions to the -corresponding FIVPs systems.
Remark 4. Let and let , represent the solutions of -corresponding FIVPs systems for each . If has valid level sets and is Caputo []-differentiable, then is an -solution of FFIVPs (1) on .
4. Application of the RPS Method to Solve FFIVPs
In this section, the fundamental principle of the proposed technique is introduced to predict and obtain analytical solutions for FFIVPs (1). The RPS approach provides an approximate solution by substituting the FPS expansion in its fractional truncated residual function.
Theorem 2. Suppose that and have the following FS expansions about :
where
and
. If
, for
, then the coefficients
and
will be written as
, and
, so that
(
-times).
Proof: Let and be two arbitrary functions that could be expressed by an FS expansion (4). If we substitute , into (5), one can notice that , , and , for .
On other hand, operating
on both sides of (5) gives
Then, by substituting into (6), we obtain and .
Next, by applying
once on the resulting Equation (6):
Here, if in (7), then the second coefficients of (5) will be and . Likewise, by operating on both sides of (6) and substituting into the resultant fractional equation the result is , and .
In the same way, we applied , -times, and then considered in the resultant fractional equation, then the pattern of the unknown coefficients were obtained, and hence and , in the FS expansions (5) had the general forms and , for . □
To reach our purpose, the following approach was used under Caputo [(1)-]-differentiable. Likewise, it can be applied to solve FFIVPs (1) under Caputo [(2)-]-differentiable.
Step A: According to Theorem 2, the RPS solutions of FIVPs system (3) at
have the following FS forms:
It is clear that
and
satisfy the initial condition of (3), then
and
will be the initial guess approximations for (3). So, the series solutions can be written as:
Then, the
-truncated series of the solutions
and
can be given as:
Step B: Identify the so-called
-th residual functions of (3) as follows:
As in [
18], we note that
, for
and each
. In fact, this leads to
, because of
, for any constant
. Further,
and
are equivalent at
, for each
.
Step C: Substitute the -truncated series of the solutions and of (7) into the -th residual functions and .
Step D: Apply the fractional operator
, for
to both sides of the obtained fractional equations in Step C and then solve the following fractional systems for the target unknown coefficients:
Step E: After solving (12), we obtained the forms of and in the expansions (10), and hence the -truncated series solutions were found.
Now, to find
and
, we considered
, in (10), then substituted
and
into
and
of (11), that is,
Then, by solving the system
and
, we obtained
and
. Thus, the 1st-FS approximated solutions for the system of FIVPs (3) can be written as:
Similarly, to determine
and
, we set
in (10), then substituted
, and
into
of Equation (11), as follows:
By applying the operator
on both sides of (15), we obtained the
-th Caputo fractional derivative of
and
and then we solved the obtained algebraic equations
and
, obtaining
and
. Therefore, the 2nd-FS approximated solutions for the system of FIVPs (3) can be written as:
Thirdly, to obtain the coefficients
and
, we considered
, in (10), then substituted
, and
in
of (8); then, by computing
and
and using the facts
the coefficients
, and
were obtained such that
and
. Hence, the 3rd-FS approximated solutions for the system of FIVPs (3) can be summarized in the following expansions:
Using the same argument, the process can be repeated till the arbitrary order coefficients of the FS solutions for the system of FIVPs (3) are obtained. Hence, a higher degree of approximated solutions was achieved.
5. Numerical Experiments
In this section, we considered two FFIVPs of order to demonstrate the efficiency and applicability of our algorithm. Here, all the symbolic and numerical computations were performed by using Mathematica 12.
Example 1. Consider the following FFIVPs:
where
is a fuzzy triangular number and has the
-level representations
for
. Based on Algorithm 1, the FFIVPs (18) will be transformed to one of the subsequent FIVPs systems:
Case 1: The system of FIVPs corresponding to Caputo [(1)-
]-differentiable is
If
then the
-level representations of the exact solutions for the FIVPs system (19) are given by:
In light of the previous steps for the RPS algorithm, starting with
and
, the
-residual functions
and
for (19) will be defined as:
where
and
indicating the
th-FS approximated solutions for (19), have the following forms:
Now, to construct the 1st-FRPS-approximated solutions, consider in the residual Equation (21) to obtain and . Then, by using the fact , we obtained . So, the 1st-FS approximated solutions for the FIVPs (19) can be expressed as and .
Again, to find the 2nd-FS approximated solutions, put , in (22), taking into account and applying in the resulting equations to obtain and . Then, by considering that , the coefficients and will be obtained, such that . Hence, the 2nd-FS approximated solutions could be given as and .
Similarly, by computing the operator of the 3rd-residual functions, one can get and . Then, by solving the resultant fractional equations at , we obtained . Therefore, the 3rd-FS approximated solutions could be given as and .
Using the same approach for
and based on the fact that
, we obtained
. Depending on this, the 4th-FS approximated solutions can be written as
and
. Moreover, depending on the fact that
for
, the FS approximated solutions for (19) could be reformulated as:
where
is the Mittag–Leffler function.
In the case of
, the FS expansions (23) could be reduced to the following forms:
which coincide with the Taylor series expansions of the exact solutions
and
.
Table 1 shows the lower and the upper bound solutions,
and
of the 7th-FS approximated solutions for FIVPs (19) for different values of
, when
.
Case 2: The system of FIVPs corresponding to Caputo [(2)-
]-differentiable is
If
then the
-level representations of the exact solution for the FIVPs system (25) are given by:
According to the RPS approach, starting with the 0th-FS approximated solutions
, the
th-FS approximated solutions of (25) take the forms:
Thus, the
th-residual functions of (25) will be
To obtain the values of the coefficients and , , in FS expansions (27), solve the algebraic fractional system in and that was obtained considering .
Following the procedure of the RPS algorithm, the values of , and , in (27) can be obtained as follows:
For , we had , and . Then, considering , we obtained , .
For , we had , and . Lastly, by considering , we obtained , .
For , we had , and . Thus, by considering , we obtained , .
For , we had , and . Thus, by considering , we obtained , .
Likewise, for and considering , the coefficients and will be obtained such that , .
Continuing with this procedure and based upon
, , the 8th-FS approximated solutions for IVPs (25) were obtained:
In particular, when
, the FS approximated solutions for (25) could be expressed as
which agrees with the Maclurain series expansions of the exact solutions
and
.
Utilizing the RPS method, the numerical results of the fuzzy 8th-FS approximated solutions
are shown in
Table 2 of Example 1, case 1, for different values of
and a fixed value of the
-level. The effectiveness and reliability of the present method were also demonstrated via computing the absolute errors of the lower and upper approximated solutions and are presented in
Table 3 of Example 1, case 2. From the table, we note the agreement between the obtained and the exact solutions at standard order
.
The behavior of the fuzzy 8th-FS approximated solutions
of Example 1, case 1, with various values of fractional order
are shown in
Figure 1. The impact of the parameter
-level on the behavior of the lower and upper 8th-FS approximated solutions of Example 1, case 2, are illustrated in
Figure 2. Moreover, the effect of the fractional order
on the behavior of the lower and upper 8th-FS approximated solutions is demonstrated in
Figure 3. Notice that, for different values of
and
, the approximated solutions are continuously approaching to the exact solutions when
. Therefore, we expect a veracious solution to such problems with various values of
.
Example 2. Consider the following FFIVPs:
where
and
are two fuzzy triangular numbers and have the
-level representations
.
Indeed, the FFIVPs (29) will be transformed to one of the subsequent systems with respect to type of Caputo differentiability:
Case 1: The system of FIVPs corresponding to Caputo [(1)-
]-differentiable is
The exact solutions of FIVPs system (30) when
could be obtained as
In view of the last described FS technique, we took into account
and
. Suppose that the
-th approximated solutions for FIVPs (30) have the following FS expansions form
To determine
and
we considered the solutions of
,
, in which
and
are the
th residual functions of (30), defined as
Anyhow, by using the FS algorithm, the first few coefficients
and
are:
Consequently, the 7th-FS approximated solutions of FFIVPs (30) can be represented as
For the particular case of
, the FS-approximated solutions for (30) can be written as
and are in agreement with the Taylor series expansions of the exact solutions
Case 2: The system of FIVPs corresponding to Caputo [(2)-
]-differentiable is
The exact solutions of FIVPs system (34) when
could be obtained as
According to the application of the RPS approach, selecting
and
, we obtained the 0th-FS approximated solutions; then, the
th-truncated FS approximated solutions for FIVPs (34) are given by the following forms:
Next, we defined the
th-residual functions
and
for (34) as follows:
Following the procedure of the RPS algorithm, the first few coefficients
and
are
Therefore, the 8th-FS approximated solutions of FIVPs (34) can be represented as
Correspondingly, for
, the 8th-FS approximated solutions (38) can be written as
which agrees with the first eighth terms of the MacLaurin series of the exact forms
, and
.
Table 4 presents the absolute errors of the obtained solutions by the RPS method for Example 2, case 2. The results in
Table 4 show that the absolute errors of the proposed method were quite small. Further, numerical simulations of the outcomes for Example 2, case 1, were performed and are presented in
Table 5.
Next, the numerical comparisons of the errors for Example 2 under Caputo [(1)-
]-differentiability are discussed using our method and the homotopy analysis (HA) method [
41] for different values of
, as shown in
Table 6. From this table, one can observe that the RPS solutions were more accurate than the HA solutions.
The surface plots in
Figure 4 show the 8th-FS approximated solution behavior at various values of
for
, for Example 2, case 2.
Figure 5 illustrates the effect of the parameter
on the obtained solutions against the exact solutions for Example 2, case 2, at standard order
.