Asymptotic behavior of a nonisothermal viscous Cahn-Hilliard equation with inertial term (Q2642062)

Of concern is a two-phase model subject to nonisothermal phase separation in a three-dimen\-sional domain. The corresponding system contains a viscous Cahn-Hilliard equation that incorporates the second time derivative of the order parameter, which is coupled with an evolution equation for the relative temperature. The latter is of hyperbolic type when the Cattaneo-Maxwell heat conduction law is assumed. Appropriate initial and boundary conditions (of Neumann type) are imposed. The authors first establish a well-posedness result, and then prove the precompactness of trajectories and the existence of a global attractor. Finally, under the assumption that the nonlinear potential is real analytic, it is shown (with the help of a version of the Lojasiewicz-Simon inequality) that each trajectory converges to a stationary state. An estimate of the decay rate to equilibrium is also obtained.