1. Introduction
In this paper, we prove the existence of solution of Dirchlet problems involving the p-polyharmonic operators
. We consider
(1)
where
is a bounded domain,
,
,
is denoted in section 2, and
,
. Here, the p-polyharmonic operator is defined by
, (2)
which becomes the usual p-Laplacian for
. Kratochvl and Necâs introduced the p-biharmonic operator in [1] [2] [3] to study the physical equations, the p-biharmonic operator for
and the polyharmonic operator for
, which reduces to the more appoximate case
. (3)
We introduce for
, the main s-order differential operator
. (4)
Note that
is an n-vectorial operator when s is odd and
, while it is a scalar operator when s is even.
In our hypothesis, the Kirchhoff function
is assumed to be continuous and to verify the structural assumptions (M):
(M1) M is non-decreasing;
(M2) there exists a number
such that for all
;
(M3) for all
, there exists
such that
for all
.
We introduce the Sobolev critical exponent
and the number
defined by following
(5)
A very special Kirchhoff function verifying (M) is denoted by
(6)
when M is of the type (6) and
, problem (1) is said to be non-degenerate, while it is called degenerate if
. Besides, problem (2) reduces to the usual well-known quasilinear elliptic equation while
. The existence of positive solutions of non-degenerate Kirchhoff-type problems has been proved in [4] [5] for
. The novelty of this paper is to treat the degenerate case with allowing Kirchhoff function to take the zero value. Several authors have considered fourth order problems with nonlinear boundary conditions involving third order derivatives, see [6]. The classical counterpart of our problem models containning several interesting phenomena were deeply studied in physicals even in the one-dimensional case. It dates back to 1883 when Kirchhoff proposed his celebrated equation:
,
as a nonlinear extension of D’Alambert’s wave equation for free vibrations for elastic strings.
Here we study a stationary version of Kirchhoff-type problems, where
is the lateral displacement at the space coordinate
and M is typically a line with positive slope. Our result allows M to have this property. The classical Kirchhoff theory described further details and physical models, which can be found in [7] [8]. In the standard case
, problem of type (2) arise in the theory of bending extensible elastic beams. There
denotes a thin extensible elastic beam. The function f models a small changes with effect in the length of beam but acts as a force exerted on the beam. We read to [6] and the references therein for a discussion about modelling of Kirchhoff-type strings and beams. We cite the wide literature on the subject, the works [9] [10] [11] [12], where Kirchhoff-type problems new studied by exploiting different methods.
We recall that study of semilinear case with datum
in [13] [14] [15] [16], with respect to (1), we assume that the coefficient
of the zero order term and to the datum
, in addition to imposing that
, (7)
and there exists
such that, for
a.e.,
(8)
There is assumption that
is continuous function satisfies
(9)
There has been an increasing interest in studying equations involving p(x)-Laplace operators over the last few decades. Motivated by theoretical research in the regularizing effect of the interaction between the coefficient of the zero order term and the datum
in some nonlinear Dirchlet problems, we pay attention to the existence of solutions for p(x)-polyharmonic Kirchhoff equations. Now we consider the problems
(10)
where
is a bounded domain Lipschitz boundary, M is a degenerate Kirchhoff function and
. More details and conditions are given in section 4. The p(x)-polyharmonic operator is given by
. (11)
The author exploits the symmetric mountain pass theorem to proves the multiplicity of solutions for p(x)-polyharmonic elliptic Kirchhoff equations in [17]. In contrast, in this paper, the keystone of the proofs them is the deduction, by condition (7), (8), of the
-estimate of the approximated solutions, we prove the problem existing a solution
.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we introduce some basic notation and properties in variable exponent Sobolev spaces. In Section 3, we prove the problem (1) (
) existing a solution
. In Section 4, we treat the more delicate case
.
2. Notations and Preliminaries
In this section, we briefly introduce some basic results and notations. Let
be a bounded domain in
, we denote a multi-index
, with length
, such that the corresponding partial differentation:
.
Write:
(12)
where
denotes the standard
-norm. See [18], we denote the space
is the completion of
with respect to the standard norm of
. Moreover, denote
be the completion of
, with respect to the norm:
. (13)
By the poncaré inequality, there exists a positive constant
, with
, such that
(14)
Hence, we obtain that the norms
are equivalent, so that the two completions of
, with corresponding these norms, namely
We endow the vectorial space
, with respect to the norm
(15)
where
and
, we still use the same symbol
to denote both the standard
-norm in the scalar space
and the norm define in (15), in the vectorial space
.
For
, by the Caldéron-Zygmund inequality, see details in [19] [20], there exists a constant
such that:
(16)
Proposition 2.1. If
and
, then there exists a positive constant
such that:
(17)
where
is denoted in (4), see also in [17].
Hence, from now on we endow
with the norm
, which is equivalent to the standard Sobolev norm.
Remark 2.1. For all
,
.
is a separable, uniformly convex, reflexive, real Banach space.
Note that, when
, this norm is introduced by the inner product
(18)
when s is even the operation between
and
is scalar multiplication, while s is odd, it is the n-Euclidean scalar product.
Lemma 2.1. See [21] (Schuader’s theorem) Let F be a completely continuous map and let K be a convex, bounded, closed and invariant subset of X. Then F has a fixed point in K.
F is completely continuous map:
1) F is continuous.
2) For every B is bounded subset of X, then
is compact.
Proposition 2.2. See [18], for
, the embedding
is compact and continuous, there exists
, such that:
(19)
We study problem (1) for a solution, we understand:
(20)
where
is the operator in (4) and
is the p-polyharmonic operator
in weak sense.
3. Existence and Uniqueness of Solution for (1)
In order to study the solution of problem (1), we consider problems:
(21)
where
is a bounded domain in
,
, and
. Indeed, suppose
,
, and exist
, then
.
Let us define:
(22)
and that we choose
, such that
(23)
for every
.
Theorem 3.1. There is a solution
to the problem (21).
Proof. Since
is increasing, we deduced by (8) that,
(24)
We define:
where
, by M2 and (24), we can get
by the Hölder’s inequality and the Poincaré equality, then
since
and
, then
is bounded, coercive and weakly lower semicontinuous, such that
has a minimizer and the Euler equation is:
Moreover, such a minimizer is unique, by the strict convexity of J.
Fixed
, let
, define
to be the unique solution of the problem:
(25)
We will use the
as a test in (25), we get

by (M1, M3), (22), (24) and Hölder’s inequality, we obtain

where
, and
is the conjugate exponent of q, by (23) and the Poincaré equality, it follows that

We take
, so that the ball of radius
is invariant
under s in
. In order to apply the Schauder’s Fixed Point Theorem, apart from the invariant, we need to check the continuity and compactness of s as an operator from
to
. So, the proof will be divided into two steps.
Step 1: We prove the continuity. In order to do this, we define
and
then:
(26)
Since the convergence of
in
, by (26) we obtain:
(27)
In fact, let
, be a sequence in
converging to
.
To this end, by choosing
as a test function, we have
![]()
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by the inequality
, for
, and
, by Hölder’s inequality, we obtain
(28)
as
,
![]()
where
is bounded, then by (27), and
, there is
, hence S is continuous from
to
.
Step 2. We prove S is compact, first we take a sequence
that
, therefore by Rellich-Kondrachov Theorem, we obtain
(29)
Since S is continuous,
.
with S is a positive constant, independent of k, such that,
(30)
Because of the continuity of S, necessarily
, so that proceeding as in (28), we can get:
![]()
as
, the second term of left hand is vanished by (29) and (30). we can conclude
![]()
and therefore S is compact.
Hence, by lemma 2.1, there exists a solution
of problem (21), next we will prove the problem (1).
We will use the following function defined for
, by
(31)
We use
as a test function in approximate problem (21), then
![]()
by (M1, M3), and (24) we obtain:
(32)
by (9) and (23), this means:
(33)
which by (33) implies that
and the sequence
is bounded in
.
Next, we use
as a test function to deduce, such that,
![]()
by
and (23) we can get
(34)
then,
(35)
and we obtain that
is bounded in
and a sequence, still denoted
, which converges weakly in
and a.e. to u with
.
Moreover, using that
, we obtain by the dominated convergence theorem, the convergence of the sequence
to
, which together with the
convergence of
to
, we pass to the limit in the problem (21), we prove that u satisfies (1), with
.
4. A p(x)-polyharmonic Kirchhoff Equation
In this section, we begin by recalling some basic results on the variable exponent Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces, see details in [22] [23].
As before, we define:
(36)
where
is a bounded domain, and
,
. Let h be the function in
, an important role in manipulating the generalized Lebesgue-Sobolev spaces is played by
spaces, which is the convex function:
defined by:
(37)
Let p be a fixed function in
. We endow the Luxemburg norm:
(38)
by variable exponent Lebesgue space, it is a separable, reflexive Banach space. For
,
in
, then the embedding
is continuous and the norm of the embedding operator does not exceed
. see [23].
be the function obtained by conjugating the exponent p pointwise, so that
for all
, the
belongs to
.
Note that, by Hölder-type inequality is valid:
(39)
with
as proved in [23].
For
, we introduced the variable exponent Sobolev space
defined by:
(40)
and endow the standard norm:
![]()
We point out that the nonstandard growth condition of
type.
Lemma 4.1. (Therorems 1.3 of [24] ) If
, with
, then the following relations hold:
![]()
and
in measure in
and
. In particular,
is continuous in
.
From now on we also assume that
, where
is the space of all the functions of
, which are logarithmic Hölder continuous, there exists
, such that:
![]()
With
, the space
denotes the completion of
with respect to the norm
.
Lemma 4.2.
is a separable, uniformly convex, Banach space, see details in [22].
By the Poincaré inequality, see [25] [26], the equivalent norm for the space
is given by:
(41)
under this assumption, when
, as a consequence for the main Coldéron-Zygmund results, there exists a constant
such that:
(42)
We recall that the operator
is defined in (4) is vectorial, when s is odd, we endow
space with the norm
(43)
where
with abuse of the notation we use the same symbol
to denote both the standard Luxemburg norm in the scalar space
and the norm defined in (43) for the vectorial space
.
Proposition 4.1. See [17] for all
there exists
, such that
(44)
We endow the space
with the norm
, such that
![]()
Let
denote the critical variable exponent related to p defined for all
, by the pointwise relation:
(45)
If
for all
, the Sobolev embedding
is continuous and compact. If
and
, the embedding
is continuous whenever
for all
, there exists
such that:
![]()
Moreover, for
for all
(or equivalent
), then
is compactly embedded in
, see details in [17] [22] [24] [27].
Consider problem (10) with
and
, such that either
or
. The Kirchhoff function
is assumed to be continuous and to verify condition (M) given in introduction, where
.
We denote the Dirchlet function
:
(46)
where
is given by (4).
We study problem (10) for a solution we understand:
(47)
where
is the operator in (4), and
is the
-polyharmonic operator,
in weak sense.
In order to study the solvability of problem (10), we will analyze the associated approximate problem.
(48)
We recall some basic conditions and hypothesis by (22)-(24), and exist
, then
.
Theorem 4.1. There is a solution
to the problem (48).
Proof. We define
![]()
Observe that, by (46), and lemma 4.1 we get:
(49)
we take
, so that by (M1, M3), there exists
,
(50)
by M2 and (49), we can get:
![]()
by the Hölder’s inequality and the Poincaré equality, then
![]()
since
and
, then
is bounded, coercive and weakly lower semicontuous, such that
has a minimizer and the Euler equation is
![]()
Moreover, such a minimizer is unique, by the strict convexity of J.
Fix
, let
, define
to be the unique solution of the problem:
(51)
We will use the
as a test in (51) we get:
![]()
by (22), (24), (50) and Hölder’s inequality, thus,
![]()
1) If
, such that
![]()
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2) If
, such that
![]()
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We take
, so that the
ball of radius
is invariant under s in
. In order to apply the Schauder’s Fixed Point Theorem, apart from the invariant, we need to check the continuity and compactness of s as an operator from
to
. So, the proof will be divided into two steps.
Step 1: We prove the continuity. In order to do this, we define
and
then:
(52)
Since the convergence of
in
, by (52) we obtain:
(53)
In fact, let
, be a sequence in
converging to
.
To this end, by choosing
as a test function, we have
![]()
![]()
by the inequality
for
,
, (22), (38) and Hölder’s inequality, we obtain:
(54)
as
,
![]()
where
is bounded, since (53) and g is continuous, such that
![]()
hence s is continuous from
to
.
Step 2. We prove S is compact, first we take a sequence
that
, therefore by Rellich-Kondrachov Theorem, we obtain
(55)
Since S is continuous,
.
with C is a positive constant, independent of k, such that,
(56)
Because of the continuity of S, necessarily
, so that proceeding as in (54), we can get
![]()
as
, the first term of the left hand is vanished, then by (55) and (56)
![]()
therefore, S is compact.
Given these conditions on S, Schauder’s Fixed Point Theorem provides the existence of
, such that
, i.e.,
solves:
(57)
By Section 3, we also use
as a test function, then we can obtain the sequence
is bounded in
, next we will use
as a test function, we can get a sequence
, which converges weakly in
and a.e. to u with
. Finally, by the dominated convergence theorem and
convergence, we prove that u satisfies (10) with
.
Thus, we can learn some Kirchhoff equations by the above method.
Acknowledgements
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