Singular limit dynamics and attractors for wave equations connected in parallel (Q2115135)

The authors study the long-time dynamics of solutions of a system of coupled wave equations in parallel with nonlinear damping: \begin{align*} &u_{tt}-u_{xx}+\alpha(u-v) + g_1(u_t) + f_1(u,v) = 0,\\ &v_{tt}-v_{xx} - \alpha(u-v) + g_2(v_t) + f_2(u,v) = 0, \end{align*} in \((0,L) \times (0,\infty)\) with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Here, \(g_1(u_t), g_2(v_t)\) are the nonlinear damping terms, \(\alpha>0\) is the spring coupling constant, and \(f_1(u,v), f_2(u,v)\) are the nonlinear source terms. First, under suitable assumptions on the nonlinearities, they investigate the existence and the properties of global attractors. By showing that the system is gradient and by giving a quasi-stability estimate uniformly in \(\alpha\), they prove the existence, finiteness of fractal dimension and smoothness of global attractors. Next, they study the singular limit of the system when \(\alpha \to + \infty\), and prove that the solutions of the above system converge (in some sense) as \(\alpha \to +\infty\) to a solution of the corresponding problem for a single wave equation \[ u_{tt} - u_{xx} + g(u_t) + f(u) = 0. \] Moreover, they establish the relationship between the global attractors of the system of coupled wave equations and the limit wave equation. They show that the family \(\mathcal{A}_{\alpha}\) of global attractors of the system of coupled wave equations converges upper semicontinuously to the global attractor \(\mathcal{A}_{\infty}\) of the limit wave equation as \(\alpha \to +\infty\).