Existence and stability of viscoelastic shock profiles (Q717475)

The authors investigate existence and stability of viscoelastic shock profiles for a class of planar models including the incompressible shear studied by \textit{S. S. Antman} and \textit{R. Malek-Majdani} [Q. Appl. Math. 46, No. 1, 77--93 (1988; Zbl 0677.73022)]. The equations of isothermal viscoelasticity are given through the balance of linear momentum: \[ \xi_{tt}-\nabla_X\cdot(DW(\nabla\xi)+\mathcal{Z}(\nabla\xi,\nabla\xi_t))=0 \] with \(\xi:\Omega\times \mathbb{R}_+\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^3\;\) the deformation of a reference configuration, \(DW\) the Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor and \(\mathcal{Z}\) the viscous stress tensor. The resulting equations fall into the class of symmetrizable hyperbolic-parabolic systems and hence spectral stability implies linearized and nonlinear stability with sharp rates of decay. The new contributions are the treatment of the compressible case, the formulation of a rigorous nonlinear stability theory, including the verification of small amplitude Lax shocks and the investigations of numerical Evans function computations determining stability of large-amplitude and non-classical shock profiles.