Sufficient conditions for decay estimates of the local energy and a behavior of the total energy of dissipative wave equations in exterior domains (Q1683754)

The classical initial boundary value problem with Dirichlet boundary condition, in an exterior domain \( {\Omega}{\subset}{\mathbb R^n}\), \(n{\geq}2\), of a bounded set, for the wave equation with a dissipation term is considered. Decay estimates for the energy in bounded regions are investigated. For any domain in the \(n\) dimensional space, the local energy of solutions and the uniform decay rate are introduced. Under some assumptions on the dissipation term coefficient \(a(x)\), and in case that special estimates involving \(a(x)\) and initial data hold for every solution of the stated initial boundary value problem, a local energy decay estimate is proved. By means of manipulating the conditions on \(a(x)\), two applications to decay estimates for the total energy are shown.