Global non-small data existence of spherically symmetric solutions to nonlinear viscoelasticity in a ball (Q647932)

The authors solve initial-boundary value problems for nonlinear equations of the three dimensional elasticity of the form \[ \varrho u_{tt}=\text{div}\,\sigma+\varrho\;\text{in}\,\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^3\times \mathbb{R}_+, \] where \(u=u(x,t)=(u_1(x,t),u_2(x,t),u_3(x,t))\in \mathbb{R}^3\) is the displacement vector, \(\varrho\) is the mass density, \(\sigma\in \mathbb{R}^9\) the nonlinear stress tensor, \(f=(f_1(x,t),f_2(x,t),f_3(x,t))\) the external force field. The domain \(\Omega\) is bounded. Both the Dirichlet \(u|_S=0\) or Neumann \(\bar n\cdot \sigma|_S=0\) boundary conditions together with initial conditions \(u|_{t=0}=u_0,\;u_{,t}|_{t=0}=u_1\) are examined. Since it is not known how to solve the problem in the case of an arbitrary bounded domain, the authors restrict their attention to the spherically symmetric case and solve the problem in the case that \(\Omega\) is the ball \(B_R\) with radius \(R\) centered at the origin. They verify the existence of bounded and continuous weak solutions.