1. Introduction
Fractional calculus, dealing with integral and differential operators of non-integer order, has found interesting applications in many engineering and scientific disciplines such as physics, chemistry, mathematical biology, mechanics, and so forth, see the monographs [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9]. Usually, fractional derivatives are defined in terms of fractional integral operators with different forms of the kernel function. Examples include Riemann–Liouville, Caputo, Hadamard, Katugampola and Hilfer fractional derivatives. Certain forms of fractional operators contain a number of different fractional operators. For example, the generalized fractional derivative of Katugampola [
10,
11] includes both Riemann–Liouville and Hadamard fractional derivatives. The Hilfer fractional derivative operator [
12] contains Riemann–Liouville as well as Caputo fractional derivative operators. Another fractional derivative operator unifying Caputo, Caputo–Hadamard and Caputo–Erdélyi–Kober fractional derivative operators is the
-fractional derivative operator [
13]. The
-Hilfer fractional derivative operator introduced in [
14] generalizes many of the well-known fractional derivative operators, see [
15].
Initial and boundary value problems involving the
-Hilfer fractional derivative operator recently received considerable attention. In [
14], an existence and uniqueness result for a
-Hilfer type fractional initial value problem was derived. The authors discussed the existence of solutions for
-Hilfer fractional differential equations and inclusions supplemented with nonlocal boundary conditions in [
15].
Motivated by the work presented in [
14,
15], in the present paper, we studied the existence of solutions for a
-Hilfer type fractional differential equation of order in
equipped with nonlocal
-Riemann–Liouville fractional integral boundary conditions. In precise terms, we investigated the following
-Hilfer type fractional boundary value problem:
where
denotes the
-Hilfer type fractional derivative operator of order
,
,
,
is the
-Riemann–Liouville fractional integral of order
and
The corresponding multi-valued analogue of
-Hilfer type boundary value problem (
1) provided by
was also studied. In (
2),
represents a multi-valued map (
denotes a family of all nonempty subsets of
), while the other quantities are the same as described in the problem (
1).
We applied Krasnosel’skiĭ’s fixed point theorem and the Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative to prove the existence results for the problem (
1), while the uniqueness of solutions for the problem (
1) was established via Banach’s fixed point theorem. The existence results for the multivalued problem (
2) for convex-valued and non-convex-valued cases were, respectively, obtained by means of the Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative for multi-valued maps and the Covitz–Nadler fixed point theorem for multi-valued contractions. Concerning the advantages of the methods employed in the present study over other existing methods, we mention that the tools of the fixed point theory provide a suitable platform to establish the existence theory for boundary value problems once the problem at hand is converted into a fixed point problem.
Here, we recall that Hilfer fractional differential equations find useful applications in real world problems such as filtration processes [
16,
17], advection–diffusion phenomena [
18], glass forming materials [
19], etc. On the other hand, the nonlocal integral boundary conditions have potential applications in physical problems such as diffusion processes [
20], blood flow problems [
21], bacteria self-organization models [
22], etc. We anticipated that the modeling of physical phenomena based on the Hilfer fractional derivative would be improved by using the
-Hilfer fractional derivative. Further, the
-Hilfer type boundary value problems considered in this paper correspond to a variety of fractional boundary value problems for different choices of
, for details, see [
15]. In fact, the results obtained for the problems (
1) and (
2) are not only new in the given configuration but also correspond to several special cases for an appropriate choice of the values of
and the parameters involved in the given problems. Hence, the work established in this paper enriches the existing literature on the class of
-Hilfer boundary value problems.
The remainder of our paper is arranged as follows. In
Section 2, we recall some fundamental concepts related to the study of the proposed problems.
Section 3 contains an auxiliary result that plays a key role in converting the given problems into equivalent fixed point problems.
Section 4 is devoted to the derivation of the main results for the single-valued problem (
1), while the existence results for the multi-valued problem (
2) are established in
Section 5. Illustrative numerical examples demonstrating the applicability of the obtained theoretical results are presented in
Section 6. The paper concludes with some interesting observations.
5. The Multi-Valued Problem
For each
we define the set of selections of
as
Definition 5. A continuous function z is said to be a solution of the -Hilfer type nonlocal integral fractional boundary value problem (2), if it satisfies the boundary conditions and there exists an integrable function f with for a.e. such that z satisfies the differential equation on Our first result for the multi-valued problem (
2) is concerned with the case when the multi-valued map
has convex values, and relies on the nonlinear alternative of the Leray–Schauder type for multi-valued maps [
30].
Theorem 4. Suppose that:
is -Carathéodory, where
∃
a continuous nondecreasing function and a positive continuous real valued function q such that, ∀,∃
a constant such thatwhere is defined by (9).
Then, the multi-valued problem (2) has at least one solution on Proof. We define an operator
by
Notice that the fixed points of
are solutions to the problem (
2).
We split the proof into several steps.
Step 1. is convex, for each
Since is convex, this step is obvious, and so the proof is omitted.
Step 2. Bounded sets are mapped by into bounded sets in
Let
Then, for each
, there exists
such that
Further, for
we have
which implies that
Step 3. maps bounded sets into equicontinuous sets of
Let
with
and
Then, for each
we find that
which shows that
independently of
as
. Therefore,
is completely continuous by the application of the Arzelá–Ascoli theorem.
In the next step, we show that
has a closed graph, which is equivalent to the fact that
is a upper semi-continuous multivalued map by Proposition 1.2 in [
31].
Step 4. has a closed graph.
Let
and
Then, we need to show that
Since
there exists
such that, for each
Thus, we must show that there exists
such that, for each
Let us consider the linear operator
given by
Observe that
as
Consequently,
is a closed graph operator, by a Lazota–Opial result [
32]. Further, we obtain
Since
we obtain
for some
.
Step 5. We prove that there exists an open set such that, for any and all we have
Assume that
for
Then, there exists
with
such that, for
, we have
Then, as in the second step, one can obtain
By
, there exists
such that
. Let us set
From the preceding arguments,
is a compact and upper semi-continuous multivalued map with convex closed values. By definition of
there does not exist any
such that
for some
. Hence, it follows by the nonlinear alternative of the Leray–Schauder type for multi-valued maps [
30] that
has a fixed point
, which is indeed a solution to the multi-valued problem (
2). The proof is complete. □
Now, we apply the fixed point theorem for multivalued contractive maps suggested by Covitz and Nadler [
33] to show that there exists a solution to the problem (
2) when
is not necessarily a convex valued map.
Theorem 5. Assume that
is such that is measurable for each , where
∃
a function such thatwith for almost all and
Then, the problem (2) has at least one solution on provided thatwhere is given by (
9).
Proof. By the assumption
, the set
is nonempty for each
Hence, by implementing Theorem III.6 [
34],
has a measurable selection. We now prove that
for each
Consider
such that
in
Then, we have
and there exists
such that, for each
,
Since
has compact values, there exists
which converges to
v in
Hence,
and for each
we have
Thus,
Next, we show that
Let
and
. Then ∃
such that, for each
,
Using
, we obtain
So, ∃
such that
Define
by
According to Proposition III.4 [
34], the multivalued operator
is measurable, and thus ∃ a function
which is a measurable selection for
. So
and for each
, we have
.
For each
, let us define
Then, we have
Hence
Analogously, by interchanging the roles of
z and
, we obtain
So,
is a contraction, and thus
has a fixed point
z by application of the Covitz and Nadler theorem [
33]. Consequently, there exists at least one solution on
to the problem (
2). The proof is finished. □
6. Examples
In this section, some examples, illustrating the obtained theoretical results in the previous section, are presented.
Consider the following
-Hilfer type nonlocal integral fractional boundary value problem
Here, , , , , , , , , , , , and we can compute that , , , .
Example 1. Let be a nonlinear unbounded Lipschitz function defined byClearly, satisfies the Lipschitz condition with constant asfor all and Moreover, Hence, by Theorem 1, the problem (14) with given in (15), has a unique solution on Example 2. Let a nonlinear bounded Lipschitz function be given byNote thatfor all . Observe that satisfies the Lipschitz condition with the Lipschitz constant . Using the given data, we obtain . As a consequence, the conclusion of Theorem 2 applies and hence, the problem (14) with given by (16) has at least one solution on . It is imperative to notice that the uniqueness of the solution for this problem cannot be guaranteed since Example 3. Consider the functionwhere , with , and . Then, we haveSetting , we can find a constant satisfying the condition of Theorem 3 asBy applying Theorem 3, we deduce that the problem (14) with given in (17) has at least one solution on . Example 4. Let be defined bywhere , with , and are positive constants with . Then, we obtainChoosing a function , we find a constantsatisfying the condition of Theorem 3. Thus, all the assumptions of Theorem 3 are satisfied. Hence, the problem (14) with given by (18) has at least one solution on . Example 5. Assume that the first equation of (14) is replaced bywhereObserve that is a measurable set. Additionally,Now, we set such that for almost all . From , we deduce that the -Hilfer type fractional inclusion (19) with nonlocal integral boundary conditions given in (14), has at least one solution on . 7. Conclusions
We presented the existence criteria for solutions to the -Hilfer type fractional differential equations and inclusions of order in complemented with nonlocal integral boundary conditions. We first transformed the nonlinear -Hilfer type fractional boundary value problem into a fixed point problem. For the single-valued case, we established existence and uniqueness results by applying the Banach contraction mapping principle, Krasnosel’skiĭ fixed point theorem and the Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative. Our first existence result dealing with the convex-valued multi-valued map involved in the inclusion was established by applying the Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative for multivalued maps, while the existence result for the non-convex valued multivalued map in the inclusion was obtained by applying the Covitz–Nadler fixed point theorem for contractive multivalued maps. It is worthwhile to mention that the work established for -Hilfer fractional differential equations supplemented with nonlocal -Riemann–Liouville fractional integral boundary conditions is more general and significant as the -Riemann–Liouville and -Caputo fractional derivatives are special cases of the -Hilfer fractional derivative. Moreover, the -Riemann–Liouville fractional integral operator used in the boundary conditions is of a more general nature.