Synchronization of nonlinear oscillations of two coupling Berger plates (Q884488)

This paper studies a system of two identical equations, modeling the oscillations of plates according to the approach of \textit{H. M. Berger} [J. Appl. Mech. 22, 465--472 (1955; Zbl 0066.42006)], which are linearly coupled. The existence of an attractor is proved, as well as its upper semi-continuous dependence on the parameter measuring the strength of the coupling. It is also proved that for sufficiently strong coupled plates, the oscillations of the two plates synchronize in the sense that the attractor for the full system is contained in the cartesian product of the attractor of the single plate equation with itself. On the other hand it is proved that if the attractor for the single plate equation contains more than one equilibrium, then the system does not synchronize (in the above sense) when the coupling is sufficiently weak.