Global attractors for the extensible thermoelastic beam system (Q1018372)

In order to obtain a system of differential equations that describe the vibrations of an extensible thermoelastic beam, the authors combine the ideas of Woinowski-Kringer regarding the effect of an axial force on the vibration of hinged bars with the results from linear thermoelasticity due to Carlson. This system consists of an evolution system of equations in the variable \(u\) and \(t\), where \(u\) represents the vertical deflection of the beam from its configuration at rest and \(t\) is the temperature variation. The temperature actually arises from an approximation of the temperature variation with respect to a reference value and it has the dimension of a temperature gradient. To this system the authors add some initial conditions and take Dirichlet boundary conditions for the temperature variation and hinged boundary conditions for vertical deflection. So, it is obtained a mixed initial boundary value problem that generates a dynamical system which is the main goal of the paper. The focus of the paper is the study of the longterm properties of the above mentioned dynamical system in the natural weak energy phase space. In particular, for the autonomous case, the authors prove the existence of the global attractor of optimal regularity, for all values of a real parameter.