Ladyzhenskaya-Prodi-Serrin condition for fluid-structure interaction systems

TL;DR

This paper establishes a conditional regularity and uniqueness criterion for fluid-structure interaction systems involving viscous incompressible fluids and visco-elastic shells, extending classical results to more general geometries.

Contribution

It extends Ladyzhenskaya-Prodi-Serrin type conditions to fluid-structure systems with visco-elastic shells and general geometries, providing new regularity and uniqueness results.

Findings

Proved existence of local strong solutions.

Derived an acceleration estimate under the Serrin assumption.

Established a weak-strong uniqueness theorem.

Abstract

We consider the interaction of a viscous incompressible fluid with a flexible shell in three space dimensions. The fluid is described by the three-dimensional incompressible Navier--Stokes equations in a domain that is changing in accordance with the motion of the structure. The displacement of the latter evolves along a visco-elastic shell equation. Both are coupled through kinematic boundary conditions and the balance of forces. We prove a counterpart of the classical Ladyzhenskaya-Prodi-Serrin condition yielding conditional regularity and uniqueness of a solution. Our result is a consequence of the following three ingredients which might be of independent interest: {\bf (i)} the existence of local strong solutions, {\bf (ii)} an acceleration estimate (under the Serrin assumption) ultimately controlling the second-order energy norm, and {\bf (iii)} a weak-strong uniqueness theorem. The first point, and to some extent, the last point were previously known for the case of elastic plates, which means that the relaxed state is flat. We extend these results to the case of visco-elastic shells, which means that more general reference geometries are considered such as cylinders or spheres. The second point, i.e. the acceleration estimate for three-dimensional fluids is new even in the case of plates.