Energy decay for a damped nonlinear coupled system (Q1961026)

The author studies the following system of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations \[ \begin{aligned} u_1'' + \Delta^2 u_1 + a u_2 + g_1(u_1') &= 0 \\ u_2'' - \Delta u_2 + a u_1 + g_2(u_2') &= 0 \end{aligned} \] in a bounded time-space cylinder. Here \(a\) is an \(L^\infty\) - function that cannot be too large (depending on certain Sobolev constants for the domain), and the functions \(g_i\) vanish at the origin. The main results are a wellposedness theorem for weak solutions and a result on energy decay. The energy decay is exponential or algebraic, depending on the behavior of the \(g_i\) near zero.