Energy decay for the quasilinear wave equation with viscosity (Q1895788)

This paper is concerned with the rate of the energy decay of solutions to the quasilinear wave equation with viscosity in a bounded domain \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^N\) with smooth boundary \(\partial\Omega\). More precisely, the equation is the following: \[ u_{tt}- \text{div}\{\sigma(|\nabla u|^2) \nabla u\}- \Delta u_t= 0\quad\text{in }(0, \infty)\times \Omega,\tag{1} \] \[ u(x, 0)= u_0(x),\;u_t(x, 0)= u_1(x)\text{ and } u\bigl|_{\partial\Omega}= 0,\tag{2} \] where the typical example of \(\sigma(v^2)\) is: \(\sigma(v^2)= 1/\sqrt{1+ v^2}\), and in this case, (1) represents the equation of the vibration of the fixed membrane with viscosity. The unique existence of classical solutions for any smooth initial data was proved by \textit{H. Pecher}, \textit{T. Kobayashi} and the reviewer [Math. Ann. 296, No. 2, 215- 234 (1993; Zbl 0788.35001)]. The author proves the decay rate of the energy of such classical solutions. Concerning the small and smooth solutions, more general nonlinear hyperbolic equations with nonlinear strong damping term, like \(\nabla(f(\nabla u_t))\), were solved globally in time and also the exponential decay of the energy of solutions was known, cf. \textit{S. Kawashima} and the reviewer [Commun. Math. Phys. 148, No. 1, 189-208 (1992; Zbl 0779.35066)]. But, the decay property of the solutions for large data has been an open question as an interesting problem. In the present paper, the author proves that under the assumption that the mean curvature of the boundary \(\partial\Omega\) is non-positive with respect to outward normal, the first energy \(E(t)\) has the following estimate: \[ E(t)\leq C(|u_0|_{H_2}, |u_1|_{H_1})(1+ t)^{- (N+ 2)/(N- 2)}\quad\text{for } 2\leq N\leq 10, \] where \((1+ t)^{- \infty}\) is replaced by \(e^{- ct}\) with some \(c> 0\) when \(N= 2\) and \[ E(t)= {1\over 2}\Biggl\{|u_t(t, \cdot)|^2+ \int_\Omega \int^{|\nabla u(t, x)|^2}_0 \sigma(\eta)d\eta dx\Biggr\}. \] Using such estimates, he also proves an existence theorem of global weak solution with the decay property.