Global existence and convergence near equilibrium for the moving interface problem between Navier-Stokes and the linear wave equation

TL;DR

This paper proves global existence and convergence to equilibrium for a moving interface problem involving Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics and a linear wave elastic model, near a flat interface equilibrium, with gravity considered.

Contribution

It establishes the existence and long-term convergence of solutions near equilibrium for a coupled fluid-structure problem involving Navier-Stokes and linear wave equations.

Findings

Solutions exist globally near equilibrium.

Solutions converge to flat interface solutions over time.

Gravity effects are incorporated in the analysis.

Abstract

We first establish existence for all positive time near equilibrium for the moving interface problem between the Navier-Stokes equations for the evolving fluid phase (moved by the fluid velocity) and an elastic body modelled by the linear wave equation. This problem has an infinite number of simple solutions with a flat interface (with zero velocity in the fluid, and zero horizontal velocity in the solid), that we call flat interface solutions. We then show that if the initial data is close enough to the canonical equilibrium, the solution converges towards a flat interface solution in large time, showing that these flat interface solutions capture the long time behaviour of this fluid-structure problem near the canonical equilibrium. This result is established with gravity (which can be set to zero or not). It is established for the case where the solid has initial volume close to the volume of its reference configuration (where the linear wave equation is naturally written).