Abstract
In this study, we examine a q-Kirchhoff-type equation defined on a bounded domain, incorporating nonlinear boundary damping and source terms with variable exponents. Assuming appropriate conditions on the initial data and the variable exponent functions, we establish the global existence of solutions. Subsequently, we derive a general decay estimate for these solutions. Lastly, we demonstrate that solutions with negative initial energy exhibit finite-time blow-up.
Keywords:
q-Kirchhoff type equation; variable exponents; nonlinear boundary conditions; global existence; general decay; blow-up MSC:
35L35; 35A01; 35B40
1. Introduction
In this paper, we study the following initial boundary value problem
where is a bounded domain with a smooth boundary , , denotes the unit outer normal derivative, , are given functions belonging to suitable spaces. The operator is the classical q-Laplacian given by . The function is given by , where and are positive constants. The function will be specified later. The exponents and are given measurable functions on and satisfy
where
and the log-Hölder continuity condition
for , with and .
Remark 1.
In (4), we have added the condition which was not present in the original result (see Lemma 5 below). This additional assumption ensures that, when we later use the condition in the following sections, the inequality holds true.
This initial boundary value problem (1) describes a nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equation with nonlocal, nonlinear damping and source terms, and mixed boundary conditions. It models the dynamics of a vibrating medium (e.g., membrane, plate, or elastic body) whose mechanical properties depend nonlinearly on the global energy (or gradient norm) of the system a feature common in materials with nonlinear strain-dependent stiffness or viscoelastic damping.
The function represents the displacement of the medium at position x and time t. Think of it as the vertical deflection of a membrane or the deformation of an elastic body.
The terms =div denote respectively the acceleration term and the -Laplacian which arises in modeling materials with nonlinear stress–strain relationships. For , it describes media where the resistance to deformation increases more than linearly with strain (e.g., certain polymers, soils, or biological tissues).
The term is a nonlocal elastic restoring force []. The coefficient depends on the total -energy of the gradient This means the stiffness of the material increases with the overall deformation energy modeling strain-hardening materials or systems with nonlocal feedback (e.g., Kirchhoff-type strings or plates where tension depends on the entire deformation). The term is a nonlocal, nonlinear damping term. It acts on the velocity gradient and its strength depends again on the total deformation energy [].
The boundary condition in Equation (1), is a dynamic boundary condition coupling the interior dynamics with boundary interactions, where is the nonlinear elastic flux (stress) normal to the boundary. It’s the boundary counterpart of the internal -Laplacian force, and is the nonlinear damping flux at the boundary, depending on the gradient of velocity. The right-hand side is a nonlinear, -dependent source term on the boundary. This could represent external forcing, boundary feedback, or even boundary reactions (e.g., in combustion or growth models) (see [,,] for more details).
We begin by reviewing existing literature relevant to problem (1). When boundary conditions are omitted, the equation reduces to the classical Kirchhoff-type model, which has been widely investigated in the literature with well-established results on existence, nonexistence, and decay rates of solutions. Let us recall some works related to problem (1) in the case where . When is empty, Chueshov [] investigated problem (1) in the presence of a source term. The author proved the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions and analyzed the long-term dynamics of the system. In a similar study, Ding et al. [] established the existence of a global attractor. More generally, Lazo [] considered an extension of the problem by replacing the Laplace operator with a positive self-adjoint operator A defined on a Hilbert space H, and proved the existence of a global solution using the Galerkin method. Now, when , Ouaoua et al. [] studied a problem similar to (1) by taking , , a damping term of the form , and a source term with variable exponent. They proved the global existence of the solution with positive initial energy and established a stability result. Messaoudi [] analyzed the equation
establishing decay properties of its solutions through a blend of perturbed energy and potential well techniques. Wu and Xue [] revisited the same equation and derived uniform energy decay estimates using multiplier methods. Pişkin [] further explored both energy decay and finite-time blow-up phenomena for (6). Mokeddem and Mansour [] extended these contributions by proving global existence and providing precise estimates for the energy decay rate. Additionally, Ouaoua et al. [] examined the following related equation:
where they established the global existence of solutions using potential energy and Nehari functionals. The stability of the equation was proved using Komornik’s integral inequality. Recently, Gheraibia et al. [] considered the following p-Kirchhoff type hyperbolic equation with damping terms, dynamic boundary conditions, and source term acting on the boundary
where , and is a nonincreasing positive function. Under suitable assumptions on the function and the initial data, the authors proved the global existence of solutions and established a general decay of energy by using Martinez’s integral inequalities [].
Variable exponent problems arise naturally in numerous mathematical models across applied sciences—including viscoelastic and electro-rheological fluids, filtration processes in porous media, and fluids whose viscosity depends on temperature, among other things. For further reading, we refer interested readers to [,] and the references therein. Messaoudi et al. [] considered the following nonlinear wave equation with variable exponents
and used the Faedo Galerkin method to establish the existence of a unique weak local solution. They also proved that the solutions with negative initial energy blow up in finite time. Ghegal et al. [] studied (9) and, under suitable conditions on the initial data and the variable exponents, the authors used a stable-set method to prove a global existence result. Then, by applying an integral inequality due to Komornik, they obtained the stability result. Park and Kang [] considered the following equation
with variable sources and acoustic boundary conditions and established a decay result by using the multiplier method. Messaoudi et al. [] considered the following nonlinear equation:
and proved the decay results for the solution under suitable assumptions. Also, the authors gave two numerical applications to illustrate the theoretical results. This result was later improved by Messaoudi []. Li et al. [] studied (11) with variable sources and established various decay rates of the energy solution. Moreover, the authors presented some numerical examples to illustrate their results. In [,], the authors established a blow-up result for solutions to equation considered in [].
In recent years, wave equations incorporating boundary damping and source terms have attracted considerable attention in the mathematical literature. Vitillaro [] studied the following initial boundary value problem:
and demonstrated that when the superlinear damping term , ensures global existence for arbitrary initial data in contrast to the blow-up behavior observed when . Zhang and Hu [] further examined the asymptotic behavior of solutions to (12), assuming initial data lies within a stable set. Kass and Rammaha [] considered the following q-Laplacian-type quasilinear wave equation:
where . They established the local and global existence of the solutions by using Faedo–Galerkin method. Boumaza and Gheraibia [] considered the following equation:
with nonlinear boundary, delay, and source terms acting on the boundary, they proved the global existence of solutions and establish the decay rate result by. Furthermore, they proved the blow-up of the solutions in finite time with negative initial energy. Recently, Kamache et al. [] investigated global existence, decay rate, and the blow-up of solutions to a Kirchhoff-type equation with nonlinear boundary delay and source terms. We also cite recent works that address problems involving variable exponents [,,].
Motivated by the aforementioned research, this work focuses on analyzing the global existence, general decay rates, and conditions for finite-time blow-up of solutions to a q-Kirchhoff-type equation in a bounded domain, featuring nonlinear damping and source terms on the boundary with variable exponents.
2. Preliminaries
2.1. Function Spaces
In this part, we list and recall some well-known results and facts from the theory of the Sobolev spaces with variable exponent (See [,,,]).
Let be a measurable function. We define the Lebesgue space with variable exponent by
where .
The space is equipped with the Luxemburg-type norm
Next, we define the variable-exponent Sobolev space by
Endowed with the norm
is a Banach space. The space is defined as the closure of in with respect to the norm , and will be equipped by the norm
Lemma 1
(Poincaré inequality []). Let Ω be a bounded domain of and satisfies (5). Let and . Then,
where c is a positive constant that depends on , , and Ω.
Lemma 2
([,]). If and is a measurable function such that
Then, the embedding is continuous and compact.
Lemma 3
(Hölder inequality []). Suppose that be measurable functions defined on Ω and satisfy
If and , then and
Lemma 4
([]). If p is a measurable function and , then, we have
Lemma 5
([]). Let Ω be a bounded domain in with boundary Γ. Suppose that with . If satisfies the condition
then, there is a compact boundary trace embeddding , where
2.2. Mathematical Hypotheses
In this section we give some notation for function spaces and some preliminary lemmas. We denote by and the usual and norms, respectively. Moreover, we denote by and the standard inner products in and , respectively.
To state and prove our results, we need the following assumptions:
H1.
is a -function and there exists a constant such that for all .
H2.
Assumptions on . Assume that satisfying the compatibility conditions
Let be the optimal constant of Sobolev imbedding which satisfies the inequality
where
According to (2), (3), and Lemma 5, we recall the trace Sobolev embeddings
and the embedding inequalities
where is a positive constant that depends on , and the log-Hölder modulus.
Definition 1.
Let . A function v defined on is called a weak solution of problem (1) if
and it satisfies the variational equation
where is the conjugate of q (i.e., ) and is the duality pairing between and .
Next, we give the local existence theorem that can be established by combining the following arguments [,,,]:
Theorem 1.
Remark 2.
Our main tool for proving existence is the Faedo–Galerkin method, which consists of constructing approximate solutions and then deriving a priori estimates to guarantee the convergence of these approximations. The proof is organized as follows: In the first step, we define an approximate problem in a finite-dimensional space, which admits a solution. In the second step, we establish the necessary a priori estimates. Finally, in the third step, we pass to the limit in the approximations by using the compactness of certain embeddings in Sobolev spaces.
Now, we define the energy functional associated with problem (1) by
Lemma 6.
Let v be a solution of problem (1). Then,
Theorem 2
(Komornik, []). Let be a non-increasing function and assume that there exist two constants and such that
Then, we have, for all and some positive constants c and ζ
3. Global Existence
In this section, we will prove that the solution established in Theorem 1 is global in time. For this purpose, we set
and
Then, it is obvious that
In order to show our result, we first establish the following lemma.
Lemma 7.
Assume that the conditions of Theorem 1 hold and . Let and such that
where
with . Then,
Proof.
Theorem 3.
Under the assumptions of Lemma 7, the local solution of (1) is global.
4. Decay Result
In this section, we state and prove the decay result of solution to problem (1) by using the integral inequalities method ([], Theorem 9.1).
Lemma 8.
Suppose that the assumptions of Lemma 7 and hold, then there exists a positive constant μ such that
Theorem 4.
Assume that the conditions of Lemma 8 hold. Then, there exist two positive constant λ and ζ such that
Proof.
Multiplying the first equation in (1) by and integrating over , we have
which gives
On the other hand, we have
Then, (36) becomes
From (29), and the definition of , we have
and
Then,
In what follows, we will estimate the right-hand-side terms in (38). By Young’s inequality, we have
The second term can be estimated as follows:
Furthermore, by Young’s inequality and , we have, for any ,
For the fourth term in (38). By using Young’s inequality with and . So, for a.e. , and
we have
where . Then, we have
Now, we are going to estimate the last term in (38). Since , for all , taking
we see that . Then, we have
Inserting (39)–(42) in (38), we find
where .
Since , we choose small enough such that
Then,
Thus, by taking , we obtain
Therefore, Komornik’s Lemma [] implies the desired result. □
5. Global Non-Existence
In this section, we state and prove the global nonexistence of solution to problem (1) with negative initial energy.
Proof.
Set
Using (18) and (19), we get
and
Next, we define
where is small positive constant and will be chosen later, and
By taking a derivative of with respect to t and using (1), we get
It follows from the definition of and , for a constant , we obtain
Applying Young’s inequality, for , we have
and
Taking and , where and are positive constants to be specified later, we see that
and
Inserting estimates (55) and (56) in (52), we get
where .
For the last two terms of the right-hand side of (57), we set,
Then, we have
and
where . Applying (48), (50), and the algebraic inequality
we obtain, for all ,
where . Similarly, we have
where .
Combining (59), (60), and (57), we get
At this point, first, we choose such that
For any fixed , we choose and so large such that
and
Once and are fixed, we select an small enough so that
Then, inequality (61) becomes
where is a positive constant. Consequently, we have
On the other hand, from (49) we have
Applying Hölder’s and Young’s inequalities, we have
for . Taking which gives . Therefore, we have
Applying (50) and applying algebraic inequality, we get
where . By substituting (65) and (66) into (64), we obtain
It follows from (63) and (67) that we find that
where is a positive constant. A simple integration of (68) over yields
Consequently, the solution of problem (1) blows up in finite time , and . □
6. Conclusions
The objective of this study is to investigate the global existence, general decay properties, and blow-up phenomena of solutions to a -Kirchhoff-type equation equipped with nonlinear boundary damping and source terms involving variable exponents. Our analysis relies on the potential well method, the multiplier technique, and nonlinear integral inequalities pioneered by Komornik, which together provide a robust framework for establishing the desired results.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, N.B. and S.M.; methodology, B.G. and S.M.; validation, N.B., Z.H. and H.Z.; formal analysis, B.G.; investigation, B.G. and Z.H.; writing—original draft, N.B.; writing—review & editing, Z.H. and H.Z.; visualization, S.M.; supervision, S.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by Ongoing Research Funding program, (ORF-2025-975), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Data Availability Statement
No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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