Life-span of classical solutions to one dimensional initial-boundary value problems for general quasilinear wave equations with Robin boundary conditions (Q713433)

In this article the following one dimensional general quasilinear wave equation with Robin boundary conditions is considered: \[ \begin{cases} u_{tt}-u_{xx}=b(u, Du)u_{xx}+F(u, Du),\quad x>0, t>0,\\ u(0, x)=\epsilon \phi(x), u_t(0, x)=\epsilon \psi(x),\quad x>0,\\ -u_x(t, 0)+\sigma u(t, 0)=0,\quad t\geq 0,\end{cases} \tag{1} \] where \(\sigma>0\) is a constant, \(D=(\partial_t, \partial_x)\), \(\phi, \psi\in {\mathcal C}_0^{\infty}(\mathbb R^+)\), \(\epsilon>0\) is a small parameter, in a neighbourhood \(\tilde{\lambda}=0\) the functions \(b(\tilde{\lambda})\), \(F(\tilde{\lambda})\) are sufficiently smooth functions for which \(b(\tilde{\lambda})=O(|\tilde{\lambda}|^{\alpha})\), \(1+b(\tilde{\lambda})\geq m_0\), \(F(\tilde{\lambda})=O(|\tilde{\lambda}|^{1+\alpha})\) for \(\alpha\in \mathbb{N}\) and positive constant \(m_0\). The author proves that there exists \(T=T(\epsilon)>0\) such that the problem (1) admits a unique classical solution on \([0, T(\epsilon)]\) and the author obtains the sharp lower bound of the life-span of the classical solutions of (1).