Nonlinear Boundary Stabilization for Timoshenko Beam System

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the existence and decay of solutions of the following Timoshenko system: $$ \left|\begin{array}{cc} u"-\mu(t)\Delta u+\alpha_1 \displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^{n}\frac{\partial v}{\partial x_{i}}=0,\, \in \Omega\times (0, \infty),\ v"-\Delta v-\alpha_2 \displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^{n}\frac{\partial u}{\partial x_{i}}=0, \, \in \Omega\times (0, \infty), \end{array} \right. $$ subject to the nonlinear boundary conditions, $$ \left|\begin{array}{cc} u=v=0 \,\, in \,\Gamma_{0}\times (0, \infty),\ \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu} + h_{1}(x,u')=0\, in\,\, \Gamma_{1}\times (0, \infty),\ \frac{\partial v}{\partial \nu} + h_{2}(x,v')+\sigma (x)u=0 \, in\, \,\Gamma_{1}\times (0, \infty), \end{array} \right. $$ and the respective initial conditions at $t=0$. Here $\Omega$ is a bounded open set of $\mathbb{R}^n$ with boundary $\Gamma$ constituted by two disjoint parts $\Gamma_{0}$ and $\Gamma_{1}$ and $\nu(x)$ denotes the exterior unit normal vector at $x\in \Gamma_{1}$. The functions $h_{i}(x,s),\,\, (i=1,2)$ are continuous and strongly monotone in $s\in \mathbb{R}$. The existence of solutions of the above problem is obtained by applying the Galerkin method with a special basis, the compactness method and a result of approximation of continuous functions by Lipschitz continuous functions due to Strauss. The exponential decay of energy follows by using appropriate Lyapunov functional and the multiplier method.}