Coupled Volterra equations with blow-up solutions (Q1914815)

The authors examine a pair of coupled nonlinear Volterra equations for possible blow-up solutions. The system is motivated by certain models of explosion phenomena in a diffusive medium. They derive criteria for a blow-up to occur as well as bounds on the time of its occurrence for a general class of nonlinearities and obtain specific results for two special cases involving power law and exponential nonlinearities. They determine the asymptotic growth rate near blow-up for these two special cases when the kernel behaves like that of the one-dimension heat equation.