New trends towards lower energy estimates and optimality for nonlinearly damped vibrating systems (Q983286)

An approach based on comparison principles for energy and interpolation properties to derive lower energy estimates for nonlinearly either locally damped or boundary damped vibrating systems is presented. The author shows how the dissipation relation provides strong information on the asymptotic behavior of the energy of solutions. The geometrical situations are either one-dimensional, or radial two-dimensional or three-dimensional for annulus domains. The case of general domains is also considered, but in this case, for solutions with bounded velocities in time and space. In all these cases, the nonlinear damping function is assumed to have arbitrary (strictly sublinear) growth at the origin. The author gives results for strong solutions and stronger lower estimates for smoother solutions. The results are presented in two forms, either on the side of energy comparison principles, or through time-pointwise lower estimates. Under additional geometric assumptions, the author gives the resulting lower and upper estimates for four representative examples of damping functions. The author further gives a ``weak'' lower estimate (in the sense of a certain \(\limsup_{t\to\infty}\)) and an upper estimate of the velocity for smoother solutions in case of general damping functions and for radial, as well as multi-dimensional domains. These estimates are also discussed in the framework of optimality, which is not proved here, and open problems raised by these results are also indicated.