ON THE STABILITY AND INSTABILITY OF A CLASS OF NONLINEAR NONAUTONOMOUS ORDINARY DIFFERENTIAI, EQUATIONS

This note Presents sufficient conditions for Lyapunov's stability and instability of a class of nonlinear nonautonomous second-order ordinary differential equations. Such a class includes as particular cases a remarkably large number of differential equations with specific physical applications. Two successive nonlinear transformations are applied to the original differential equation in order to convert it into a more convenient form for stability analysis purposes. The obtained stability / instability conditions depend closely on the parameterization of the original differential equation.