On 2D viscoelasticity with small strain (Q717176)

The paper develops a rotation-strain model of the motion of Hookean incompressible viscoelastic materials, which include a wide range of fluids with elastic properties and solids with fluid properties. This goal is achieved by the polar decomposition of the deformation tensor. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section is introductory and lays the foundation of the work presented in the latter sections. The derivation of the rotation-strain model is presented in Section 2. This section also includes a theorem for the rotation-strain model, together with a priori estimates of energy. Section 3 investigates some intrinsic properties of viscoelastic systems which are used in Section 4. Section 4 also includes the proof of the global existence theorem following these steps: 1. Standard energy estimates; 2. Weak dissipation for the strain matrix; 3. Weak dissipation for the gradient of angle variable \(\nabla\theta\); 4. A priori weak dissipative energy estimate. The proof assumes the initial strain tensor to be sufficiently small. This is a very mathematical paper and should be of interest to the researchers working in the mathematical theory of viscoelasticity.