An energy stability method for simple fluids (Q755395)

This paper describes a study of the linearized boundary-initial value problems for simple fluids obeying a Boltzmann type constitutive equation with fading memory. It is based upon a previous work by the author in which he demonstrated that the rest state of the fluid is stable in an appropriate fading memory norm and that this stable state is reached asymptotically by initial configurations of the fluid. The principle contribution of the present work is to demonstrate that the fluid decays exponentially in the solution norm to the stable state. The technique used in this proof involves a sequence of estimates for energy functionals which bound the solution norms by exponential decay. The stability of convection for a simple fluid in an arbitrary bounded domain is also studied with this technique, in this case an estimate for the rate of exponential growth is given.