Monotonicity in the damped pendulum type equations

In this paper we investigate the monotonicity in the pendulum type equations with position dependent damping. We show that the system is strongly monotone under the overdamped condition. In the underdamped case, the Poincaré map P^T is strongly monotone in a forward invariant region provided the average of the external force is large enough. Combining the strong monotonicity with the dissipation property we show that the Poincaré map has in the cylindrical phase space an invariant circle, on which P^T is actually an orientation preserving circle homeomorphism. A series of consequences has then been obtained, including the existence and uniqueness of the average velocity. Furthermore, we discuss the smoothness of this invariant curve and the ergodicity of P^T on this curve. Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (10771155, 10571131) and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK 2006046).