Polynomial decay rate for the dissipative wave equation

Using Fourier integral operators with special amplitude functions, we analyze the stabilization of the wave equation in a three-dimensional bounded domain on which exists a trapped ray bouncing up and down infinitely between two parallel parts of the boundary.     

Secular growth estimates for hyperbolic systems

We consider a model problem for the secular growth, which covers all the cases likely to happen in multi-scales BKW expansions for nonlinear hyperbolic systems. This model problem consists in studying the growth in time of the solution of a nonhomogeneous hyperbolic system whose source term is a product of various functions which solve homogeneous hyperbolic systems. The secular growth is due to resonances, that we try to control. When this is not possible, other tools such as decay properties or Strichartz estimates must be used.     

Asymptotic behavior and decay rate estimates for a class of semilinear evolution equations of mixed order

In this article we present a unified approach to study the asymptotic behavior and the decay rate to a steady state of bounded weak solutions of nonlinear, gradient-like evolution equations of mixed first and second order. The proof of convergence is based on the Lojasiewicz-Simon inequality, the construction of an appropriate Lyapunov functional, and some differential inequalities. Applications are given to nonautonomous semilinear wave and heat equations with dissipative, dynamical boundary conditions, a nonlinear hyperbolic-parabolic partial differential equation, a damped wave equation and some coupled system.     

A variational framework for nonlinear viscoelastic models in finite deformation regime

This work presents a general framework for constitutive viscoelastic models in the finite deformation regime. The approach is qualified as variational since the constitutive updates consist of a minimization problem within each load increment. The set of internal variables is strain-based and uses a multiplicative decomposition of strain in elastic and viscous components. Spectral decomposition is explored in order to accommodate, into analytically tractable expressions, a wide set of specific models. Moreover, it is shown that, through appropriate choices of the constitutive potentials, the proposed formulation is able to reproduce results obtained elsewhere in the literature. Finally, numerical examples are included to illustrate the characteristics of the present formulation.     

Numerical analysis of a frictional contact problem for viscoelastic materials with long-term memory

We consider a mathematical model which describes the bilateral contact between a deformable body and an obstacle. The process is quasistatic, the material is assumed to be viscoelastic with long memory and the friction is modeled with Tresca’s law. The problem has a unique weak solution. Here we study spatially semi-discrete and fully discrete schemes using finite differences and finite elements. We show the convergence of the schemes under the basic solution regularity and we derive order error estimates. Finally, we present an algorithm for the numerical realization and simulations for a two-dimensional test problem.     

Decay estimates for a thermoelastic system in waveguides

We investigate the linear system of thermoelasticity, consisting of an elasticity equation and a heat conduction equation, in a waveguide Ω=(0,1)×Rn−1, with certain boundary conditions. We consider the cases of homogeneous and inhomogeneous systems and prove decay estimates of the solutions, which are a key ingredient to showing the global existence of solutions to non-linear thermoelasticity, after having decomposed the solutions into various parts. We also give a simplified proof to the representation of the solutions to the Cauchy problem of thermoelasticity.     

Lorentz estimates for degenerate and singular evolutionary systems

We prove estimates of Calderón–Zygmund type for evolutionary p-Laplacian systems in the setting of Lorentz spaces. We suppose the coefficients of the system to satisfy only a VMO condition with respect to the space variable. Our results hold true, mutatis mutandis, also for stationary p-Laplacian systems.     

Global existence and uniform decay for a nonlinear viscoelastic equation with damping

In this paper we investigate a nonlinear viscoelastic equation with linear damping. Global existence of weak solutions and the uniform decay estimates for the energy have been established.     

Analysis of a dynamic unilateral contact problem for a cracked viscoelastic body

This work deals with the mathematical analysis of a dynamic unilateral contact problem with friction for a cracked viscoelastic body. We consider here a Kelvin-Voigt viscoelastic material and a nonlocal friction law. To prove the existence of a solution to the unilateral problem with friction, an auxiliary penalized problem is studied. Several estimates on the penalized solutions are given, which enable us to pass to the limit by using compactness results. Received: February 16, 2005     

General decay and blow-up of solution for a quasilinear viscoelastic problem with nonlinear source

In this paper we consider a quasilinear viscoelastic wave equation in canonical form with the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition. We prove that, for certain class of relaxation functions and certain initial data in the stable set, the decay rate of the solution energy is similar to that of the relaxation function. This result improves earlier ones obtained by Messaoudi and Tatar [S.A. Messaoudi, N.-E. Tatar, Global existence and uniform stability of solutions for a quasilinear viscoelastic problem, Math. Methods Appl. Sci. 30 (2007) 665-680] in which only the exponential and polynomial decay rates are considered. Conversely, for certain initial data in the unstable set, there are solutions that blow up in finite time. The last result is new, since it allows a larger class of initial energy which may take positive values.     

New trends towards lower energy estimates and optimality for nonlinearly damped vibrating systems

We present an approach based on comparison principles for energy and interpolation properties to derive lower energy estimates for nonlinearly either locally damped or boundary damped vibrating systems. We show how the dissipation relation provides strong information on the asymptotic behavior of the energy of solutions. The geometrical situations are either one-dimensional, or radial two-dimensional or three-dimensional for annulus domains. We also consider the case of general domains, but in this case, for solutions with bounded velocities in time and space. In all these cases, the nonlinear damping function is assumed to have arbitrary (strictly sublinear) growth at the origin. We give results for strong solutions and stronger lower estimates for smoother solutions. The results are presented in two forms, either on the side of energy comparison principles, or through time-pointwise lower estimates. Under additional geometric assumptions, we give the resulting lower and upper estimates for four representative examples of damping functions. We further give a “weak” lower estimate (in the sense of a certain lim supt→∞) and an upper estimate of the velocity for smoother solutions in case of general damping functions and for radial, as well as multi-dimensional domains. We also discuss these estimates in the framework of optimality, which is not proved here, and indicate open problems raised by these results.     

Liouville-type theorems and decay estimates for solutions to higher order elliptic equations

Liouville-type theorems are powerful tools in partial differential equations. Boundedness assumptions of solutions are often imposed in deriving such Liouville-type theorems. In this paper, we establish some Liouville-type theorems without the boundedness assumption of nonnegative solutions to certain classes of elliptic equations and systems. Using a rescaling technique and doubling lemma developed recently in Polá?ik et al. (2007) [20], we improve several Liouville-type theorems in higher order elliptic equations, some semilinear equations and elliptic systems. More specifically, we remove the boundedness assumption of the solutions which is required in the proofs of the corresponding Liouville-type theorems in the recent literature. Moreover, we also investigate the singularity and decay estimates of higher order elliptic equations.     

Non-collision periodic solutions for singular Hamiltonian systems

We study the existence of classical (non-collision) T-periodic solutions of the Hamiltonian system where and is a T-periodic function in t which has a singularity at like Under suitable conditions on H, we prove that if then (HS) possesses at least one non-collision solution and if then the generalized solution of (HS) obtained in [5] has at most one time of collision in its period.     

Global attractor for a nonlinear thermoviscoelastic model with a non-convex free energy density

This paper is concerned with the existence of a global attractor for a semiflow governed by the weak solutions to a nonlinear one-dimensional thermoviscoelasticity with a non-convex free energy density. The constitutive assumptions for the Helmholtz free energy include the model for the study of martensitic phase transitions in shape memory alloys. To describe physically phase transitions between different configurations of crystal lattices, we work in a framework in which the strain u$u$ belongs to L^∞$L^{\infty }$. New approaches are introduced and more delicate estimates are derived to establish the crucial L^∞$L^{\infty }$-estimate of strain u$u$ in deriving the compactness of the orbit of the semiflow and the existence of an absorbing set.     

A unified approach via convexity for optimal energy decay rates of finite and infinite dimensional vibrating damped systems with applications to semi-discretized vibrating damped systems

The Liapunov method is celebrated for its strength to establish strong decay of solutions of damped equations. Extensions to infinite dimensional settings have been studied by several authors (see e.g. Haraux, 1991 [11], and Komornik and Zuazua, 1990 [17] and references therein). Results on optimal energy decay rates under general conditions of the feedback is far from being complete. The purpose of this paper is to show that general dissipative vibrating systems have structural properties due to dissipation. We present a general approach based on convexity arguments to establish sharp optimal or quasi-optimal upper energy decay rates for these systems, and on comparison principles based on the dissipation property, and interpolation inequalities (in the infinite dimensional case) for lower bounds of the energy. We stress the fact that this method works for finite as well as infinite dimensional vibrating systems and as well as for applications to semi-discretized nonlinear damped vibrating PDE's. A part of this approach has been introduced in Alabau-Boussouira (2004, 2005) [1] and [2]. In the present paper, we identify a new, simple and explicit criteria to select a class of nonlinear feedbacks, for which we prove a simplified explicit energy decay formula comparatively to the more general but also more complex formula we give in Alabau-Boussouira (2004, 2005) [1] and [2]. Moreover, we prove optimality of the decay rates for this class, in the finite dimensional case. This class includes a wide range of feedbacks, ranging from very weak nonlinear dissipation (exponentially decaying in a neighborhood of zero), to polynomial, or polynomial-logarithmic decaying feedbacks at the origin. In the infinite dimensional case, we establish a comparison principle on the energy of sufficiently smooth solutions through the dissipation relation. This principle relies on suitable interpolation inequalities. It allows us to give lower bounds for the energy of smooth initial data for the one-dimensional wave equation with a distributed polynomial damping, which improves Haraux (1995) [12] lower estimate of the energy for this case. We also establish lower bounds in the multi-dimensional case for sufficiently smooth solutions when such solutions exist. We further mention applications of these various results to several classes of PDE's, namely: the locally and boundary damped multi-dimensional wave equation, the locally damped plate equation and the globally damped coupled Timoshenko beams system but it applies to several other examples. Furthermore, we show that these optimal energy decay results apply to finite dimensional systems obtained from spatial discretization of infinite dimensional damped systems. We illustrate these results on the one-dimensional locally damped wave and plate equations discretized by finite differences and give the optimal energy decay rates for these two examples. These optimal rates are not uniform with respect to the discretization parameter. We also discuss and explain why optimality results have to be stated differently for feedbacks close to linear behavior at the origin.     

Rate of decay of stable periodic solutions of Duffing equations

In this paper, we consider the second-order equations of Duffing type. Bounds for the derivative of the restoring force are given that ensure the existence and uniqueness of a periodic solution. Furthermore, the stability of the unique periodic solution is analyzed; the sharp rate of exponential decay is determined for a solution that is near to the unique periodic solution.     

Boundary estimates for elliptic systems with L<Superscript>1</Superscript>–data

We obtain boundary estimates for the gradient of solutions to elliptic systems with Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions and L ¹–data, under some condition on the divergence of the data. Similar boundary estimates are obtained for div–curl and Hodge systems.     

Dynamic bilateral contact problem for viscoelastic piezoelectric materials with adhesion

A model of a dynamic viscoelastic adhesive contact between a piezoelectric body and a deformable foundation is described. The model consists of a system of the hemivariational inequality of hyperbolic type for the displacement, the time dependent elliptic equation for the electric potential and the ordinary differential equation for the adhesion field. In the hemivariational inequality the friction forces are derived from a nonconvex superpotential through the generalized Clarke subdifferential. The existence of a weak solution is proved by embedding the problem into a class of second-order evolution inclusions and by applying a surjectivity result for multivalued operators.