Formation of singularities for a kind of quasilinear non-strictly hyperbolic system. (Q1861019)

The author studies a very important phenomenon in mechanics, which is called formation of singularities. He considers a quasilinear non-strictly hyperbolic system, \( \partial u/\partial t+A(u)\partial u/\partial x=0\), where \(u=(u_1,u_2,\dots,u_n)^T\) is the unknown vector function of time \(t\) and one-dimensional space variable \(x\), \(A(u)\) is an \(n\times n\) matrix with suitable smooth elements \(a_{ij}(u)\) (\(i,j=1,2,\dots,n\)). The non-strictly hyperbolic system is characterized with eigenvalues at \(u=0\), \(\lambda_1(0)<\lambda_2(0)\leq\cdots < \lambda_n(0)\). In nonlinear elasticity, for some homogeneous, isotropic hyperelastic materials, the system of plane elastic waves is usually a quasilinear non-strictly hyperbolic system with characteristics without constant multiplicity and eigenvalues at \(u=0\) which satisfy the above stated non-strict inequalities, where \(n=6\). The main result is based on the following conditions: (i) there is an integer \(\alpha \geq 0\) such that \(d^l\lambda_n(u^{(n)}(s))/ds^{l}| _{s=0}=0\) (\(l=1,2,\dots,\alpha \)), (ii) \(d^{\alpha+1}\lambda_n(u^{(n)}(s))/ds^{\alpha+1}| _{s=0}\neq 0\), (iii) \(u(0,x)=\varepsilon \psi (x)\), (\(\varepsilon >0\)) where \(\psi \in C^1\) satisfies \[ \sup\limits_x\in{\mathbb R}\{(1+| x| )(| \psi (x)| +| \psi ^{\prime }(x)| )\}<\infty , \] provided that \(l_n(0)\) (left eigenvector) for \(u=0\) as well as \(\psi (x)\) is non-identical zero. Then there exists \(\varepsilon_0>0\) so small that for any fixed \(\varepsilon\in (0,\varepsilon_0]\), the first order derivatives of \(C^1\)-solution \(u=u(t,x)\) must blow up in a finite time and there is a positive constant \(C\) independent of \(\varepsilon \), such that the life-span \(\widetilde T(\varepsilon )\) of \(u=u(t,x)\) satisfies \(\widetilde T(\varepsilon )\geq \overline C\varepsilon ^{-1}\) (\(\overline C>0\) independent of \(\varepsilon \)).