Critical points and positive solutions of singular elliptic boundary value problems

Usually we do not think there is variational structure for singular elliptic boundary value problems, so it cannot be considered by using critical points theory. In this paper, we use critical theory on certain convex closed sets to solve positive solutions for singular elliptic boundary value problems, especially use the ordinary differential equation theory of Banach spaces to obtain new results on the existence of multiple positive solutions. The method is useful for other singular problems. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.