General energy decay in a Timoshenko-type system of thermoelasticity of type III with a viscoelastic damping (Q615917)

A system of Timoshenko type that describes the behaviour of a linear thermoelastic beam is considered. In the previous studies on this topic, different types of damping have been used and proved that the energy associated with such Timoshenko system, decays exponentially. Another studies (for instance, the Timoshenko systems with a past history) proved that the solution decays polynomially for the case of different speeds. In the present paper, the author consider a Timoshenko system in the presence of a viscoelastic damping, under suitable conditions on the coefficients and using more generally decaying relaxation functions. Also, the heat conduction is given by Green and Naghdi theories. The main aim of the paper is a general decay result from which the usual exponential and polynomial decays are only special cases.