Strong attractors for vanishing viscosity approximations of non-Newtonian suspension flows (Q1671081)

The authors study a viscous approximation for a model of concentrated suspensions proposed by Hebraud and Lequex. This model describes the time evolution of the probablity density \(p(x, t)\) which represents the distribution of shear stress on a mesoscopic scale. \[ \frac{\partial p}{\partial t} = -b(t)\frac{\partial p}{\partial x} +(D(p)+\varepsilon) \frac{\partial^2 p}{\partial x^2} -\chi_{\mathbb{R}\setminus[-1,1]}(x)p +\frac{D(p)}{\alpha}\delta_0(x) \] where \(0\leq \varepsilon \ll 1\) is a small parameter, \(\alpha>0\) and \(b:\mathbb{R}_+\to\mathbb{R}\) is a measurable function. Moreover, solutions are required to satisfy \(p(x,t)\geq 0\) a.e. in \(\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}_+\), \[ \int_\mathbb{R} p(x,t)\,dx =1, \;\text{ a.e. in } \mathbb{R}_+ \] and \[ \int_\mathbb{R} |x| p(x,t)\,dx <\infty , \;\text{ a.e. in } \mathbb{R}_+. \] The viscous evolution equation generates for each \(\varepsilon > 0\) a semigroup on a suitable Banach space \(H\). The authors show that in the autonomous case \(b(t)\equiv b\) this semigroup possesses a connected global attractor \(\Theta_\varepsilon\) which is bounded in \(H\) uniformly in \(\varepsilon\in(0,1)\) and which can be described as the union of all bounded complete trajectories. Moreover, it is shown that the attractors \(\Theta_\varepsilon\) converge to the set of complete solutions of the original model in the limit \(\varepsilon\searrow 0\). The proof is based on a series of lemmas that describe the properties of solutions also in the more general case where \(b(t)\) is non-autonomous and bounded.