Fourth-order elliptic equations (Q2923154)

The author is concerned with the biharmonic equation \(\Delta^2 u=f(x,u)\) in \(\Omega\), subject to Navier boundary conditions \(u=\Delta u=0\) on \(\partial\Omega\). Here \(\Omega\) is a smooth and bounded domain in \({\mathbb R}^N\), \(N\geq 2\). Under various assumptions on the nonlinearity \(f\) the author proves the existence of one positive classical solution. The approach is variational, making use of a truncation argument and \(L^\infty\)-norm estimates. However, the energy functional is not assumed to satisfy the Palais-Smale condition.