Lack of exponential stability to Timoshenko system with viscoelastic Kelvin–Voigt type

Abstract

We study the Timoshenko systems with a viscoelastic dissipative mechanism of Kelvin–Voigt type. We prove that the model is analytical if and only if the viscoelastic damping is present in both the shear stress and the bending moment. Otherwise, the corresponding semigroup is not exponentially stable no matter the choice of the coefficients. This result is different to all others related to Timoshenko model with partial dissipation, which establish that the system is exponentially stable if and only if the wave speeds are equal. Finally, we show that the solution decays polynomially to zero as \({t^{-1/2}}\) , no matter where the viscoelastic mechanism is effective and that the rate is optimal whenever the initial data are taken on the domain of the infinitesimal operator.