Error estimates of the Galerkin method for quasilinear hyperbolic equations (Q1603183)

The convergence of the semidiscrete Galerkin method for an abstract second-order quasilinear hyperbolic equation in a separable Hilbert space \(H\) is studied. The original problem has the form \[ u''(t)+A(t)u(t)=F(t,u(t),u'(t)),\quad t\in[0,T], \] \[ u(0)=u'(0)=0, \] where \(A(t)\) is a family of unbounded self-adjoint positive definite operators in \(H\) with common domain \(D(A)\). This problem is approximated by the sequence of problems \[ u''_n(t)+A_n(t)u_n(t)=P_nF(t,u_n(t),u'_n(t)),\quad t\in[0,T], \] \[ u_n(t)\in V_n,\qquad u_n(0)=u'_n(0)=0, \] where \(V_n\) is a sequence of finite-dimensional subspaces of the common space \(V\) for all operators \((A(t))^{1/2}\) and \(P_n\) is the orthogonal projector in the sence of the scalar product in the space \(H\). Asymptotic error estimates in various norms are obtained. For example, \[ \max\limits_{0\leq t\leq t_0} (\|\Delta u'_n(t)\|_H+\|\Delta u_n(t)\|_V) =o(\rho^{1/2}_n),\quad n\to\infty \] (Theorem 1). Some of these estimates have exact order in the corresponding class of exact solutions.