On the stationary Navier-Stokes equations in distorted pipes under energy-stable outflow boundary conditions

Abstract: The steady motion of a viscous incompressible fluid in distorted pipes, of finite length, is modeled through the Navier-Stokes equations with mixed boundary conditions: the inflow is given by an arbitrary member of the Lions-Magenes class with positive influx, and the fluid motion is subject to a directional do-nothing boundary condition on the outlet, together with the standard no-slip assumption on the remaining walls of the domain. Existence of a weak solution to such Navier-Stokes system is proved without any restriction on the data (that is, inlet velocity and external force) by means of the Leray-Schauder Principle, in which the required a priori estimate is obtained by a contradiction argument that employs Bernoulli's law for solutions of the stationary Euler equations, as well as some properties of harmonic divergence-free vector fields. Under a suitable smallness assumption on the data, we also prove the unique solvability of the boundary-value problem.