Energy decay rate of the thermoelastic Bresse system

Abstract.

In this paper, we study the energy decay rate for the thermoelastic Bresse system which describes the motion of a linear planar, shearable thermoelastic beam. If the longitudinal motion and heat transfer are neglected, this model reduces to the well-known thermoelastic Timoshenko beam equations. The system consists of three wave equations and two heat equations coupled in certain pattern. The two wave equations about the longitudinal displacement and shear angle displacement are effectively damped by the dissipation from the two heat equations. Actually, the corresponding energy decays exponentially like the classical one-dimensional thermoelastic system. However, the third wave equation about the vertical displacement is only weakly damped. Thus the decay rate of the energy of the overall system is still unknown. We will show that the exponentially decay rate is preserved when the wave speed of the vertical displacement coincides with the wave speed of longitudinal displacement or of the shear angle displacement. Otherwise, only a polynomial type decay rate can be obtained. These results are proved by verifying the frequency domain conditions.