Approximate Controllability of Fractional Sobolev-Type Evolution Equations in Banach Spaces
Abstract
We discuss the approximate controllability of semilinear fractional Sobolev-type differential system under the assumption that the corresponding linear system is approximately controllable. Using Schauder fixed point theorem, fractional calculus and methods of controllability theory, a new set of sufficient conditions for approximate controllability of fractional Sobolev-type differential equations, are formulated and proved. We show that our result has no analogue for the concept of complete controllability. The results of the paper are generalization and continuation of the recent results on this issue.
1. Introduction
Many social, physical, biological, and engineering problems can be described by fractional partial differential equations. In fact, fractional differential equations are considered as an alternative model to nonlinear differential equations. In the last two decades, fractional differential equations (see Samko et al. [1] and the references therein) have attracted many scientists, and notable contributions have been made to both theory and applications of fractional differential equations.
Recently, the existence of mild solutions and stability and (approximate) controllability of (fractional) semilinear evolution system in Banach spaces have been reported by many researchers; see [2–36]. We refer the reader to El-Borai [3, 4], Balachandran and Park [5], Zhou and Jiao [6, 7] Hernández et al. [8], Wang and Zhou [9], Sakthivel et al. [12, 13], Debbouche and Baleanu [14], Wang et al. [15–21], Kumar and Sukavanam [22], Li and Yong [37], Dauer and Mahmudov [28], Mahmudov [27, 29], and the references therein. Complete controllability of evolution systems of Sobolev type in Banach spaces has been studied by Balachandran and Dauer [23], Ahmed [24], and Feckan et al. [2]. However, the approximate controllability of fractional evolution equations of Sobolev type has not been studied.
Our aim in this paper is to provide a sufficient condition for the approximate controllability for a class of fractional evolution equations of Sobolev type. It is assumed that E−1 is compact, and, consequently, the associated linear control system (35) is not exactly controllable. Therefore, our approximate controllability results have no analogue for the concept of complete controllability. In Section 5, we give an example of the system which is not completely controllable, but approximately controllable.
2. Preliminaries
- (S1)
A and E are linear operators, and A is closed;
- (S2)
D(E) ⊂ D(A) and E is bijective;
- (S3)
E−1 : X → D(E) is compact.
The hypotheses (S1)–(S3) and the closed graph theorem imply the boundedness of the linear operator AE−1 : X → X. Consequently, −AE−1 generates a semigroup {S(t); t ≥ 0} in X. Assume that .
Let us recall the following known definitions in fractional calculus. For more details, see [1].
Definition 1. The fractional integral of order α > 0 with the lower limit 0 for a function f is defined as
Definition 2. The Caputo derivative of order α for a function f can be written as
If f is an abstract function with values in X, then integrals which appear in the above definitions are taken in Bochner’s sense.
For x ∈ X and 0 < α < 1, we define two families {𝒮E(t) : t ≥ 0} and {𝒯E(t) : t ≥ 0} of operators by
Lemma 3 (see [2].)The operators 𝒮E and 𝒯E have the following properties.
- (i)
For any fixed t ≥ 0, SE(t) and TE(t) are linear and bounded operators, and
() - (ii)
{𝒮E(t) : t ≥ 0} and {𝒯E(t) : t ≥ 0} are compact.
In this paper, we adopt the following definition of mild solution of (1).
Definition 4. A solution x(·; u) ∈ C([0, b], X) is said to be a mild solution of (1) if for any u ∈ L2([0, b], U), the integral equation
Let x(b; u) be the state value of (9) at terminal time b corresponding to the control u. Introduce the set ℜ(b) = {x(b; u) : u ∈ L2([0, b], U)}, which is called the reachable set of system (9) at terminal time b; its closure in X is denoted by .
Definition 5. System (1) is said to be approximately controllable on [0, b] if ; that is, given an arbitrary ε > 0, it is possible to steer from the point x0 to within a distance ε from all points in the state space X at time b.
- (H4)
The function f : [0, b] × X → X satisfies the following:
- (a)
f(t, ·) : X → X is continuous for each t ∈ [0, b] and for each x ∈ X, f(·, x) : [0, b] → X is strongly measurable;
- (b)
there is a positive integrable function n ∈ L1([0, b], [0, +∞)) and a continuous nondecreasing function Λf : [0, ∞)→(0, ∞) such that for every (t, x) ∈ [0, b] × X, we have
()
- (a)
- (H5)
The following relationship holds:
()here MB∶ = ∥B∥, M𝒯∶ = ∥𝒯E∥. - (H6)
For every converges to zero as ε → 0+ in strong topology, where
()and zε(h) is a solution of()
3. Existence Theorem
Theorem 6. Assume that assumptions (S1)–(S3), (H4), (H5) hold and 1/2 < α ≤ 1. Then there exists a solution to (14).
Proof. The proof of Theorem 6 follows from Lemmas 7–9, infinite dimensional analogue of Arzela-Ascoli theorem, and the Schauder fixed point theorem.
It will be shown that for all ε > 0, the operator Φε : C ([0, b], X) → C ([0, b], X) has a fixed point. To prove this we will employ the Schauder fixed point theorem.
Lemma 7. Under assumptions (S1)–(S3), (H4), (H5), for any ε > 0 there exists a positive number r∶ = r(ε) such that Φε(Br) ⊂ Br.
Proof. Let ε > 0 be fixed. If it is not true, then for each r > 0, there exists a function zr ∈ Br, but Φε(zr) ∉ Br. So for some t = t(r) ∈ [0, b], one can show that
Lemma 8. Let assumptions (S1)–(S3), (H4), (H5) hold. Then the set {Φεz : z ∈ Br} is an equicontinuous family of functions on [0, b].
Proof. Let 0 < η < t < b and δ > 0 such that
Lemma 9. Let assumptions (S1)–(S3), (H4), (H5) hold. Then Φε maps Br onto a precompact set in Br.
Proof. Let 0 < t ≤ b be fixed and let λ be a real number satisfying 0 < λ < t. For δ > 0, define an operator on Br by
4. Main Results
Theorem 10 (see [27].)The following three conditions are equivalent.
- (i)
Γ is positive; that is, 〈z*, Γz*〉 > 0 for all nonzero z* ∈ X*.
- (ii)
For all h ∈ X, J(zε(h)) converges to zero as ε → 0+ in the weak topology, where zε(h) = ε(εI+ΓJ)−1(h) is a solution of (13).
- (iii)
For all h ∈ X, zε(h) = ε(εI+ΓJ)−1(h) converges to zero as ε → 0+ in the strong topology.
Remark 11. It is known that Theorem 10 (i) holds if and only if . In other words, Theorem 10 (i) holds if and only if the corresponding linear system is approximately controllable on [0, b]. Consequently, assumption (H6) is equivalent to the approximate controllability of the linear system (35).
Theorem 12 (see [27].)Let p : X → X be a nonlinear operator. Assume that zε is a solution of the following equation:
We are now in a position to state and prove the main result of the paper.
Theorem 13. Let 1/2 < α ≤ 1. Suppose that conditions (S1)–(S3), (H4)–(H5) are satisfied. Besides, assume additionally that there exists N ∈ L∞([0, b], [0, +∞)) such that
Then system (1) is approximately controllable on [0, b].
Proof. Let xε be a fixed point of Φε in Br(ε). Then xε is a mild solution of (1) on [0, b] under the control
Remark 14. Theorem 13 assumes that the operator E−1 is compact and, consequently, the associated linear control system (35) is not exactly controllable. Therefore, Theorem 13 has no analogue for the concept of exact controllability.
Remark 15. In order to describe various real-world problems in physical and engineering sciences subject to abrupt changes at certain instants during the evolution process, fractional impulsive differential equations have been used for the system model. Our result can be extended to study the complete and approximate controllability of nonlinear fractional impulsive differential equations of Sobolev type; see [35, 36].
5. Applications
Example 16. Let X = U = L2[0, π]. Consider the following fractional partial differential equation with control:
Define A : D(A) ⊂ X → X by A∶ = xθθ and E : D(E) ⊂ X → X by Ex : = x − xθθ, where each domain, D(A) and D(E), is given by
Next, we suppose
(H6) g : [0, b] × R → R. For each x ∈ R, g(·, x) is measurable and for each t ∈ [0, b], g(t, ·) is continuous. Moreover, sup x∈R∥g(t, x)∥ ≤ N(t), for a.e. t ∈ [0, b].
Define f : [0, b] × X → X by f(t, x)(θ) = g(t, x(t, θ)). Now, system (47) can be written in the abstract form (1). Clearly, all the assumptions in Theorem 13 are satisfied if (H6) holds. Then system (47) is approximately controllable on [0, b].