We consider the classical nonlinear fourth-order two-point boundary value problem $$\left\{\begin{array}{c}{u}^{\left(4\right)}\left(t\right)=\lambda h\left(t\right)f(t,u\left(t\right),u^{\text{'}}\left(t\right),u^{\text{'}\text{'}}\left(t\right)),0<t<1,\hfill \\ u\left(0\right)=u^{\text{'}}\left(1\right)=u^{\text{'}\text{'}}\left(0\right)=u^{\text{'}\text{'}\text{'}}\left(1\right)=0.\hfill \end{array}\right.$$ In this problem, the nonlinear term $h\left(t\right)f(t,u\left(t\right),u^{\text{'}}\left(t\right),u^{\text{'}\text{'}}\left(t\right))$ contains the first and second derivatives of the unknown function, and the function $h\left(t\right)f(t,x,y,z)$ may be singular at $t=0$, $t=1$ and at $x=0$, $y=0$, $z=0$. By introducing suitable height functions and applying the fixed point theorem on the cone, we establish several local existence theorems on positive solutions and obtain the corresponding eigenvalue intervals.

This paper concerns the following system of nonlinear third-order boundary value problem: $$u_i^{\text{'}\text{'}\text{'}}\left(t\right)+f_i(t,u_1\left(t\right),\cdots ,u_n\left(t\right),u_1^{\text{'}}\left(t\right),\cdots ,u_n^{\text{'}}\left(t\right))=0,0<t<1,i\in \{1,\cdots ,n\}$$ with the following multi-point and integral boundary conditions: $$\left\{\begin{array}{c}{u}_i\left(0\right)=0u_i^{\text{'}}\left(0\right)=0u_i^{\text{'}}\left(1\right)=\sum _{j=1}^p{\beta }_{j,i}{u}_i^{\text{'}}\left({\eta }_{j,i}\right)+{\int }_0^1{h}_i(u_1\left(s\right),\cdots ,u_n\left(s\right))ds\hfill \end{array}\right.$$ where ${\beta }_{j,i}>0$, $0<{\eta }_{1,i}<\cdots <{\eta }_{p,i}<\frac{1}{2}$, $f_i:[0,1]\times {ℝ}^n\times {ℝ}^n\to ℝ$ and $h_i:[0,1]\times {ℝ}^n\to ℝ$ are continuous functions for all $i\in \{1,\cdots ,n\}$ and $j\in \{1,\cdots ,p\}$. Using Guo-Krasnosel’skii fixed point theorem in cone, we discuss the existence of positive solutions of this problem. We also prove nonexistence of positive solutions and we give some examples to illustrate our results.

We consider a linear nonautonomous higher order ordinary differential equation and establish the positivity conditions and two-sided bounds for Green’s function for the two-point boundary value problem. Applications of the obtained results to nonlinear equations are also discussed.

We propose an approach for studying positivity of Green’s operators of a nonlocal boundary value problem for the system of $n$ linear functional differential equations with the boundary conditions $n_i{x}_i-{\sum }_{j=1}^n{m}_{ij}{x}_j={\beta }_i$, $i=1,\cdots ,n$, where $n_i$ and $m_{ij}$ are linear bounded “local” and “nonlocal“ functionals, respectively, from the space of absolutely continuous functions. For instance, $n_i{x}_i=x_i\left(\omega \right)$ or $n_i{x}_i=x_i\left(0\right)-x_i\left(\omega \right)$ and $m_{ij}{x}_j={\int }_0^{\omega }k\left(s\right)x_j\left(s\right)\mathrm{d}s+{\sum }_{r=1}^{n_{ij}}{c}_{ijr}{x}_j\left(t_{ijr}\right)$ can be considered. It is demonstrated that the positivity of Green’s operator of nonlocal problem follows from the positivity of Green’s operator...