Global existence results for Oldroyd-B fluids in exterior domains: the case of non-small coupling parameters (Q382318)

This article studies the following system in \(]0, T[\times \Omega\) where \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^{3}\) is an exterior domain with boundary \(\partial \Omega\) of class \(\mathcal{C}^{3}\): \[ \mathrm{Re} \big(\partial_{t}u+(u\cdot \nabla) u \big)-(1-\alpha) \Delta u+ \nabla p =\mathrm{div}(\tau) \] \[ \mathrm{We} \big(\partial_{t}\tau +(u\cdot \nabla)\tau + g_{a}(\tau, \nabla u) \big)+\tau = 2\alpha D(u), \] with \(\mathrm{div}(u)=0\), \(u(0)=u_{0}\), \(\tau(0)=\tau_{0}\) and \(u=0\) in \(]0, T[\times\partial \Omega\). Here Re and We denote the Reynolds and Weissenberg number of the fluid respectively. The term \(g_{a}\) is given by \(g_{a}(\tau, \nabla u)=\tau W(u)-W(u)\tau -a \big(D(u)\tau+\tau D(u)\big)\) for \(a\in [-1, 1]\), where \(D(u)=\big(\nabla u + (\nabla u)^{\top}\big)/2\) and \(W(u)=\big(\nabla u - (\nabla u)^{\top}\big)/2\). The main theorem gives the existence and uniqueness of a solution of this problem under the assumption that the initial data \(u_{0}\) and \(\tau_{0}\) are small. However, a smallness condition is not imposed to the coupling coefficient \(\alpha\). If \(\|u_{0}\|_{D(A)}+\|\tau_{0}\|_{H^{2}(\Omega)}\leq \varepsilon\), then the authors prove in this paper that the previous problem admits a unique, global strong solution. Here \(D(A)=H^{2}(\Omega)\cap H_{0}^{1}(\Omega)\cap L_{\sigma}^{2}(\Omega)\), where \(L_{\sigma}^{2}(\Omega)=\{u\in \mathcal{C}^{\infty}_{0}(\Omega): \mathrm{div}(u)=0\}^{-\|\cdot\|_{L^{2}}}\). The first step for proving this theorem is the construction of local in time solutions, this is done using a special version of Banach's fixed point theorem. Then with suitable a priori estimates, global solutions are obtained.