Uniform decay rates and asymptotic analysis of the von Kármán plate with nonlinear dissipation in the boundary moments (Q1582403)

The present paper deals with the fully nonlinear problem of dynamic elasticity where the nonlinearity presents in both the field equations and boundary conditions. Nonlinear boundary control is considered. The following system of von Kármán's equations are studied: \[ w_{tt}- \gamma^2\Delta w+ \Delta^2w+ b(x) w_t= [w,\chi(w)]\quad\text{in }(0,\infty)\times \Omega,\tag{1} \] \[ w(0,\cdot)= w_0,\quad w_t(0,\cdot)= w_1\quad\text{in }\Omega,\tag{2} \] \[ w= 0,\quad \Delta w= -g\Biggl({\partial w\over\partial\nu}\Biggr)\quad\text{in }(0,\infty)\cap \partial\Omega,\tag{3} \] where \(\Omega\in \mathbb{R}^2\) is a smooth domain, \(\partial\Omega\) is its boundary, \(\nu\) is the unit exterior normal to \(\partial\Omega\), \(\gamma\) is a small positive parameter, \(b(x)\in L^\infty(\Omega)\) is a given function, \(\chi(w)\) is the Airy's function, \[ \Delta\chi= -[w,w]\quad\text{in }\Omega;\quad \chi={\partial\chi\over \partial n}= 0\quad\text{on }\partial\Omega.\tag{4} \] In (1) and (4) \([ , brack{}\) is defined as \[ [\phi,\psi]= {\partial^2\phi\over\partial x^2} {\partial\psi\over\partial y^2}+ {\partial^2\phi\over\partial y^2}{\partial\psi\over \partial x^2}- 2{\partial^2\phi\over\partial x \partial y} {\partial^2\psi\over \partial x \partial y}. \] The main goal of this paper is to study the asymptotic behavior of solutions to (1), (2), (3), (4) when \(t\to\infty\), and the nonlinear function \(g(s)\) satisfies certain conditions. The main result is that, the solutions decay to zero uniformly in the energy norm. The rates of decay are computable and they depend on the behavior at the origin of the function \(g\). The rates of decay are uniform in the parameter \(\gamma\). A nonlinear version of Trotter-Kato type is developed to carry out the limit process \(\gamma\to 0\).