A mathematical theory for viscous, free-surface flows over a perturbed plane (Q1188034)

This paper deals with the problem of proving existence and uniqueness of a steady two-dimensional motion of an incompressible, Newtonian fluid flowing under the action of gravity down an inclined plane. The main difficulty comes from the fact that the plane is not flat with some localized non-uniform structure. Besides existence and uniqueness to the free-surface problem, the authors also obtain the exponential decay of the flow to the unperturbed Poiseuille-Nusselt flow (i.e. to the classical solution corresponding to a flat plane) far away from the local variation in the plane profile. All the results are established under the assumption that the Reynolds number of the flow is low enough to neglect the inertia term in the momentum balance equation.