A hinged plate equation and iterated Dirichlet Laplace operator on domains with concave corners (Q863925)

Fourth order hinged plate type problems are usually solved via a mixed system of two second order equations. For smooth domains such an approach can be justified. However, when the domain has a concave corner the bi-Laplace problem with Navier boundary conditions may have two different types of solutions. A striking difference is that in general only the first solution, obtained by decoupling into a system, preserves positivity, that is, a positive source implies that the solution is positive. The main part of this paper is concerned with the analytical treatment of the problem. A bounded uniformly Lipschitz domain is studied. The authors consider domains with one `concave' boundary point in second section of this paper. It is assumed that the domain near this one point is like a cone. The Dirichlet problem for the Poisson equation is investigated in third section. It is shown that typical four and higher-dimensional concave boundary points do not destroy the positivity preserving property. The analytical results are illustrated by some numerical experiments for planar domains. The authors used FreeFem++ software. It is shown, firstly, that on a standard L-shaped domain both solutions are crucially different. Secondly, sign-change occurs for angles just below 270 degrees in sectorial domains.