Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Those mixed boundary-value problems which can usefully be treated analytically often lead to the following mathematical problem. Two functions u(x), σ(x), defined over the interval ([0, ∞), take prescribed values over complementary portions of that interval; specifically, let
where p(x) is usually a simple function, for example a constant or a power of x. There exists a relation between u(x) and σ(x) which can be most simply expressed as a relation between their Hankel transforms. Using a circumflex to denote the Hankel transform, for example with
where Jv denotes as usual the Bessel function of the first kind of order v, we can state that relation between u and σ as follows:
where A(ξ) is a known function, determined at an earlier stage of the analysis. The problem is to derive u(x) for (xє [ 0, a), or σ(x) for x є (a, ∞).