Generalized solutions for inextensible string equations (Q501630)

This paper is about inextensible string equations, an old subject, which dates back to the Bernoullis. Therefore the authors start with a historical introduction. First a series of transformations is made to obtain a system of hyperbolic transformation laws with discontinuous flux. Then an approximate problem is studied, which has global well-posedness. The main theorem states that there exist global solutions in the sense of Young measures for the motion equations without restrictions on the initial data. The proofs use least action principle, Hilbertian duality argument, Gronvall lemma, mean value theorem and integration by parts.