On Leray's problem of steady Navier-Stokes flow past a body in the plane (Q1824475)

This is a study of the problem of steady Navier-Stokes flow past a prescribed body in the plane, attaining a prescribed limit at infinity. The approximate solutions constructed by Leray are not known how they behave at infinity. By maximum principle arguments \textit{D. Gilbarg} and \textit{H. F. Weinberger} have shown that Leray solutions are \(L^{\infty}\) and that their mean value on circles attains a limit at infinity [e.g.: Russ. Math. Surveys 29, No.2, 109-123 (1974; Zbl 0304.35071)]. In this paper the author introduces a new quantity \(\gamma\), which satisfies a two-sided maximum principle and is such that \(\gamma +iv\omega\) is a pseudo-analytic function, where \(\omega\) is the vorticity and v is the viscosity. First, he derives certain results for non-trivial solutions of the problem having finite Dirichlet norms and he obtains important estimates at infinity for the vorticity, the velocity and other quantities. Moreover, the unique approximate solution of the Stokes problem is shown to have bounded Dirichlet norm, which is not in general true for the approximate solution of the Navier-Stokes equations. It is also found that a certain condition on the Dirichlet norm of the approximate solution implies that the Leray solution is nontrivial. Finally, the case of symmetric flows is considered and it is shown that there is pointwise convergence of the solution at infinity, implying that the Leray solution is nontrivial. However, it is still an open question to show that the limiting value at infinity equals the prescribed value at infinity of the problem.