Energy decay and global attractors for thermoviscoelastic systems (Q663435)

For a three-dimensional bounded body -- or rather its \(n\)-space generalization -- denoted by \(\Omega\), the linear partial differential system \[ \begin{cases} & u_{tt}-\Delta u + g * \Delta u + \nabla \theta_t = 0, \\ & (x,t) \in \Omega \times (0, +\infty)\\ & \theta_{tt} - \Delta \theta_t - \Delta \theta + \text{div}\, u_t = 0,\\ & (x,t) \in \Omega \times (0, +\infty) \end{cases} \] models its thermoviscoelastic behavior, the functions \(u=u(x,t)\) and \(\theta=\theta(x,t)\) being the displacement and temperature. In this system, \(*\) stands for the convolution operator, and the following conditions are imposed on \(\partial \Omega = \Gamma_0\;\cup\;\Gamma_1\), the body boundary, which is assumed to be smooth and that \(\Gamma_0\neq \emptyset\), in the above partition: \[ u = 0 ,\;\;\; (x,t) \in \Gamma_0 \times (0, +\infty), \] \[ \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu} - g * \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu} + H(u_t) =0, \;\; (x,t) \in \Gamma_1 \times (0, +\infty), \] \[ \theta_t = 0 ,\;\;\; (x,t) \in \partial \Omega \times (0, +\infty). \] Technical hypotheses are required upon the \(n\)-valued functions \(g\) and \( H\), particularly that \[ H(u) = \left( h_1(u_1), \ldots, h_n(u_n)\right), \] while standard initial data are defined, for \(\;x \in \Omega\;\), through \[ u(x,0) = u_0(x) ,\;\;\; u_t(x,0) = u_1(x) , \] \[ \theta(x,0) = \theta_0(x) ,\;\;\; \theta_t(x,0) = \theta_1(x). \] Here the authors show that the solutions for such an initial-boundary value problem satisfy energy decay estimates. These are deduced with roughly the same techniques already employed for the viscoelastic model. Further, the existence of a single attractor is obtained as the main result in this article.