Approximate solutions of a nonlinear oscillator typified as a mass attached to a stretched elastic wire by the homotopy perturbation method

Abstract

The homotopy perturbation method is used to solve the nonlinear differential equation that governs the nonlinear oscillations of a system typified as a mass attached to a stretched elastic wire. The restoring force for this oscillator has an irrational term with a parameter λ that characterizes the system (0 ⩽ λ ⩽ 1). For λ = 1 and small values of x, the restoring force does not have a dominant term proportional to x. We find this perturbation method works very well for the whole range of parameters involved, and excellent agreement of the approximate frequencies and periodic solutions with the exact ones has been demonstrated and discussed. Only one iteration leads to high accuracy of the solutions and the maximal relative error for the approximate frequency is less than 2.2% for small and large values of oscillation amplitude. This error corresponds to λ = 1, while for λ < 1 the relative error is much lower. For example, its value is as low as 0.062% for λ = 0.5.