On the dynamics of Navier-Stokes equations for a shallow water model (Q631876)

The author investigates the following free boundary problem of one-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations with a density-dependent viscosity \[ \begin{cases} \rho_{\tau}+(\rho u)_{\xi}=0,\\ (\rho u)_{\tau}+(\rho u^2 +P(\rho))_{\xi}=(\mu(\rho)u_{\xi})_{\xi}-\rho g ,\end{cases} \] in the domain \(O:=\{(\xi,\tau): <\xi<l(\tau)\), \(\tau>0\}\) with the boundary function \(l\) satisfying \(l'(\tau)=u|_{\xi=l(\tau)}, \) for \(\tau >0\), where \(\rho, u, P(\rho)=A\rho ^2\) and \(g\) are the density, velocity, pressure and gravitational constant respectively, and the viscosity \(\mu(\rho)\) is assumed to be \(\mu(\rho)=C\rho, A\) and \(C>0\) are constants. Here the initial conditions are \((\rho, u)|_{\tau =0}=(\rho_0, u_0)(\xi)\), for \(\xi \in (0, l_0)\), \(l|_{\tau =0}=l_0\) and the boundary conditions are \(u|_{\xi =0}=0\), \(\rho|_{\xi =l(\tau)}=0\), for \(\tau > 0\). These systems include, in particular, a simple model of the one-dimensional shallow water system describing vertically averaged flows in three-dimensional shallow domains in term of the mean velocity \(u\) and the variation of the depth \(\rho\) due to the free surface, which is widely used in geophysical flows. The main results of this article consist in the proof of the global existence, uniqueness and the large time behavior of weak solutions to this initial boundary value problem. In particular, it is shown that a stationary wave pattern connecting a gas to the vacuum continuously is asymptotically stable for small initial general perturbations.