Abstract

Nonlinear Autonomous Oscillations presents a self-contained and readable account for mathematicians, physicists, and engineers. This monograph is mainly concerned with the analytical theory of nonlinear autonomous oscillations, with the approach based mostly on the author’s work. After some introductory material, in Chapter 5 a moving orthogonal coordinate system along a closed orbit is introduced. In the next four chapters, stability theory and perturbation theory are systematically discussed for general autonomous systems by means of a moving coordinate system. In Chapter 10, the two-dimensional autonomous system is discussed in detail on the basis of results obtained in the preceding chapters. In Chapter 11, a numerical method for determining a periodic solution of the general nonlinear autonomous system is described. To illustrate this, the periodic solutions of the autonomous van der Pol equation for various values of the damping coefficient are computed. Chapter 12, which is based on the work of the author and Sibuya, discusses the center of higher dimension. Chapter 13 discusses a particular inverse problem connected with the period of periodic solutions of one interesting equation. There are, of course, many other topics of importance in the theory of nonlinear autonomous oscillations. These are, however, omitted in the present monograph because they are mainly topological rather than analytical and in order to keep the book from growing inordinately long.