Existence and uniform decay of solutions of a degenerate equation with nonlinear boundary damping and boundary memory source term (Q4265729)

The authors study the following problem with a nonlinear memory term on the boundary in \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n\): \[ K_1(x,t) y_{tt} +K_2(x,t) y_t -\Delta y=0\quad \text{in }\Omega,\;t\geq 0, \] together with initial conditions and boundary conditions: \(y=0\) on \(\Gamma_1\), \[ {\partial y\over\partial\nu } +y +y_t +g(t)|y_t|^\rho y_t =g*|y|^\gamma y\quad \text{on }\Gamma_0, \] where \(K_1(x,t)\) can vanish on \(\Omega\times (0,\infty)\), \(\partial\Omega =\Gamma_0\cup\Gamma_1\), \(*\) denotes the convolution, \(\rho,\gamma\) are positive constants which depend on \(n\). The above problem is related to the study of transonic gas dynamics. Viscoelastic problems with memory terms have been studied by many authors and there exists a large body of literature concerning the existence and the large-time behavior of solutions. The contribution of this paper is that the authors deal with degenerate equations and nonlinear boundary feedback combined with a nonlinear memory source term. Using the Galerkin approximation and the perturbed energy method, the authors prove under some assumptions on \(K_1\), \(K_2\), \(g\) that there exists a unique global solution and the energy associated with the solution decays exponentially as \(t\to\infty\).