Asymptotic Expansions of the Periodic Solutions of Nonlinear Evolution Equations

In this paper we present a spectral technique for building asymptotic expansions which describe periodic processes in conservative and self-excited systems without assuming the oscillations to be weakly nonlinear. The small parameter of the expansion is connected with the ratio of the amplitudes of higher than the first harmonics in contrast to the traditional parameter connected with weak nonlinearity. In the case of an oscillator with power nonlinearity the frequency of the main harmonic and the complex amplitudes of higher harmonics are computed as the expansions of either integer (for weakly nonlinear oscillations) or algebraic (for strong nonlinearity) functions of the complex amplitude of the first harmonic depending on the character of the initial conditions and the maximum power of the nonlinear term in the equation. In the simplest case of weakly nonlinear oscillations the complete asymptotic expansion is shown to be valid in the whole domain of the periodic motions of definite type until the separatrix is reached. The expressions for the first terms of the expansion for concrete examples coincide with the expressions obtained both with the use of other methods and by expanding the exact solutions. For some special cases of the strongly nonlinear oscillations the comparison of the results with known exact solutions is carried out as well as the criteria of convergence of the expansions are determined.