Polynomial decay rate of a thermoelastic Mindlin–Timoshenko plate model with Dirichlet boundary conditions

Abstract

In this article, we are concerned with the polynomial stabilization of a two-dimensional thermoelastic Mindlin–Timoshenko plate model with no mechanical damping. The model is subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions on the elastic as well as the thermal variables. The work complements our earlier work in Grobbelaar-Van Dalsen (Z Angew Math Phys 64:1305–1325, 2013) on the polynomial stabilization of a Mindlin–Timoshenko model in a radially symmetric domain under Dirichlet boundary conditions on the displacement and thermal variables and free boundary conditions on the shear angle variables. In particular, our aim is to investigate the effect of the Dirichlet boundary conditions on all the variables on the polynomial decay rate of the model. By once more applying a frequency domain method in which we make critical use of an inequality for the trace of Sobolev functions on the boundary of a bounded, open connected set $${\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n, n \geq 2,}$$ we show that the decay is slower than in the model considered in the cited work. A comparison of our result with our polynomial decay result for a magnetoelastic Mindlin–Timoshenko model subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions on the elastic variables in Grobbelaar-Van Dalsen (Z Angew Math Phys 63:1047–1065, 2012) also indicates a correlation between the robustness of the coupling between parabolic and hyperbolic dynamics and the polynomial decay rate in the two models.