Existence and exponential decay for a Kirchhoff-Carrier model with viscosity (Q1268736)

The authors establish the existence and uniqueness of both strong and weak solutions of a nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equation that has its origin in essential model of Kirchhoff and Carrier which describes small vibrations of an elastic stretched string. Galerkin's approximation method is used to establish these results. Then the perturbed energy method is used to derive the exponential decay of these solutions. First uniform decay for strong solutions has been obtained. Then by using a density argument similar decay for weak solutions is obtained.