A Boundedness and Stability Results for a Kind of Third Order Delay Differential Equations

The objective of this study was to get some sufficient conditions which guarantee the asymptotic stability and uniform boundedness of the null solution of some differential equations of third order with the variable delay. The most efficient tool for the study of the stability and boundedness of solutions of a given nonlinear differential equation is provided by Lyapunov theory. However the construction of such functions which are positive definite with corresponding negative definite derivatives is in general a difficult task, especially for higher-order differential equations with delay. Such functions and their time derivatives along the system under consideration must satisfy some fundamental inequalities. Here the Lyapunov second method or direct method is used as a basic tool. By defining an appropriate Lyapunov functional, we prove two new theorems on the asymptotic stability and uniform boundedness of the null solution of the considered equation. Our results obtained in this work improve and extend some existing well-known related results in the relevant literature which were obtained for nonlinear differential equations of third order with a constant delay. We also give an example to illustrate the importance of the theoretical analysis in this work and to test the effectiveness of the method employed.