Global attractor for the Kirchhoff type equation with a strong dissipation (Q615975)

The Kirchhoff equation originally describes oscillations of an initially stretched elastic string. The authors study the long time behaviour of a generalisation of this equation defined on a bounded domain in \(N\)-dimensional Euclidean space with a strong dissipation prescribed by by a given function depending on the velocity field. The displacement field is supposed to vanish at the boundary of the domain. Initial conditions on the displacement and velocity fields are given. By making extensively use of the properties of appropriately defined Sobolev and Hilbert spaces the authors manage to prove under some assumptions global existence and uniqueness theorems for the solution. They also show that the semigroup of operators describing the evolution of the displacement and the velocity fields from the given initial conditions is asymptotically compact and possesses a global attractor.