Stability analysis of fractional differential equations with the short-term memory property

Abstract

The commonly defined fractional derivatives, like Riemann-Liouville and Caputo ones, are non-local operators which have the long-term memory characteristic, since they are in connection with all historical data. Because of this special property, they may be invalid for modeling some processes and materials with short-term memory phenomena. Motivated by this observation and in order to enlarge the applicability of fractional calculus theories, a fractional derivative with the short-term memory property is defined in this paper. It can be viewed as an extension of the Caputo fractional derivative. Several properties of this short memory fractional derivative are given and proved. Meanwhile, the stability problem for fractional differential equations with such a derivative is studied. By applying fractional Lyapunov direct methods, the stability conditions applicable to the local case and the global case are established respectively. Finally, three numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the correctness and effectiveness of the theoretical results.