The residue harmonic balance for fractional order van der Pol like oscillators

When seeking a solution in series form, the number of terms needed to satisfy some preset requirements is unknown in the beginning. An iterative formulation is proposed so that when an approximation is available, the number of effective terms can be doubled in one iteration by solving a set of linear equations. This is a new extension of the Newton iteration in solving nonlinear algebraic equations to solving nonlinear differential equations by series. When Fourier series is employed, the method is called the residue harmonic balance. In this paper, the fractional order van der Pol oscillator with fractional restoring and damping forces is considered. The residue harmonic balance method is used for generating the higher-order approximations to the angular frequency and the period solutions of above mentioned fractional oscillator. The highly accurate solutions to angular frequency and limit cycle of the fractional order van der Pol equations are obtained analytically. The results that are obtained reveal that the proposed method is very effective for obtaining asymptotic solutions of autonomous nonlinear oscillation systems containing fractional derivatives. The influence of the fractional order on the geometry of the limit cycle is investigated for the first time. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.