Wellposedness of an elliptic-dispersive coupled system for MEMS (Q6165961)

Local well-posedness is shown for a model describing the space and time evolution of the pressure \(u\) and the deformation \(w\) in an electrostatically actuated MEMS device filled with an incompressible fluid: \begin{align*} \partial_t w & = \operatorname{div}\big( w^3 \nabla u \big), \qquad x\in\Omega, \ t>0, \\ \partial_t^2 w & = \Delta w - \Delta^2 w - \frac{\beta_F}{w^2} + \beta_p(u-1), \qquad x\in\Omega, \ t>0, \end{align*} supplemented with Dirichlet boundary conditions \[ u=\theta_1, \quad w=\theta_2, \quad \Delta w = 0, \qquad x\in\partial\Omega, \ t>0, \] and initial conditions \((w,\partial_t w)(0)=(w_0,v_0)\). Here, \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain of \(\mathbb{R}^n\), \(n\in\{1,2\}\), and \((\beta_F,\beta_p,\theta_1,\theta_2)\in (0,\infty)^4\). Given \(w_0\in H^4(\Omega)\), satisfying \(w_0-\theta_2 = \Delta w_0 = 0\) on \(\partial\Omega\) and \(\kappa = \inf_{\Omega}\{w_0\}>0\), and \(v_0\in H^2(\Omega)\cap H_0^1(\Omega)\), it is shown that there are \(T_0>0\) and a unique solution \((u,w)\) with \(u\in C([0,T_0),H^1(\Omega))\) and \[ w\in C^2([0,T_0),L^2(\Omega)) \cap C^1([0,T_0),H^2(\Omega)) \cap C([0,T_0),H^4(\Omega)), \] the component \(w\) being positive on \(\Omega\times [0,T_0)\). The proof relies on the semilinear structure of the equation for \(w\) to which a fixed point procedure is applied with the help of the semigroup formulation. An intermediate step is the solvability of the elliptic equation \(\operatorname{div}\big( w^3 \nabla u \big) = f\) for a given positive function \(w\).