Asymptotic behavior of Timoshenko beam with dissipative boundary feedback (Q1614678)

The theory of Timoshenko beams and plates has been a ``hot'' topic in the engineering literature over the past 30 years. The reason for this popularity is a much better modelling of the actual behavior of structural elements than offered by classical Euler-Bernoulli or Kirchhoff models. A lengthy list of papers studying aspects of analysis, design or control of the Timoshenko beams or plates can be found in recent review articles. For example, the control of Timoshenko beams and plates has been extensively investigated by the University of Virginia team of Lasiecka and Triggiani and their collaborators. One should also mention the Institute of Control Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Butkovskii and his collaborators, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and of course the Institute of Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is the home of two of the authors of this article. The present authors propose a dissipative boundary feedback control. They offer a \(C_0\) semigroup argument establishing the existence and uniqueness of solutions for the proposed type of feedback. They study a closely related system for which it is easier to establish the existence of nontrivial solutions. Their results are displayed in several pages of formulas containing the elements of fundamental solutions. Intricate calculations follow, producing a set of sufficient conditions for the asymptotic decay of the energy of the system. The result is important, but the massive amount of tedious computations makes it very hard to check the details.