# Stability results for the KdV equation with time-varying delay

### Introduction

The Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV), is a third-order nonlinear one-dimensional equation given by y_{t}+y_{x}+y_{xxx}+yy_{x}=0. It was introduced in [6] to model the propagation of long water waves in a channel. In the last few years, the controllability and stabilization properties of the KdV have been very studied; see [3, 9] for a complete introduction of these problems.

FIGURE 1. Solitary waves.

In this post, we are interested in the effect of a time-delay in the boundary stabilization of the KdV equation. Time delay phenomena appear in many applications, for example in biology, mechanics or engineering. Delays terms are unavoidable in practice due to measurement lag, analysis time, or computation time. Very active research has developed recently on stability problems of partial differential equations with delay. It is well known that even a small delay in the feedback mechanism can destabilize a system, see for example [4]. But a delay term can also improve the performance of the system [1].

### 1 Boundary time-varying delay

In this post inspired by [2], we are going to consider the following system

\left\{\begin{array}{ll} y_{t}+y_{x}+y_{xxx}+yy_{x}=0,& t>0, \ x \in (0,L), \\ y(0,t)=y(L,t)=0, &t>0, \\ y_{x}(L,t)=\alpha y_{x}(0,t)+\beta y_{x}(0,t-\tau(t)), &t>0, \\ y(x,0)=y_{0}(x), & x \in (0,L), \qquad \qquad (KdVd) \\ y_{x}(t-\tau(0),0)=z_{0}(t-\tau(0)),\quad 0 \lt t \lt \tau(0), \end{array}\right.

where \tau is the delay function which satisfies the following conditions

where 0\leq d \lt 1, and

Assume that \alpha, \beta, d in (KdVd) are real constants satisfying

\begin{gathered} \text{The matrix } \Phi_{\alpha,\beta}=\begin{pmatrix}\alpha^{2}-1+|\beta| & \alpha\beta \\ \alpha\beta & \beta^{2}+|\beta|(d-1)\end{pmatrix} \text{is definite negative. \qquad \qquad (4)} \end{gathered}

Let H=L^{2}(0,L)\times L^{2}(0,1) and define the energy of (KdVd) by

The main result of this post is the following one

### Theorem 1.1 (PVT [8]).

Suppose that (1)-(4) are satisfied and that L \lt \pi\sqrt{3}. Then, there exists r>0 such that, for every (y_{0},z_{0}) \in H satisfying \|(y_{0},z_{0})\|_{H}\leq r, we have E(t)\leq Ce^{-2\gamma t}E(0), \forall t>0, where, for \mu_{1} and \mu_{2} small enough,

\gamma \leq \min \bigg\{ \dfrac{(9\pi^{2}-3L^{2}-2L^{3/2}r\pi^{2})\mu_{1}}{3L^{2}(1+2L\mu_{1})},\dfrac{(1-d)\mu_{2}}{M(2\mu_{2}+|\beta|)} \bigg\}.

### 2 Well-posedness ideas

In this part, we focus in the study of linearization around 0 of (KdVd), that is

Now, we introduce z(\rho,t)=y_{x}(0,t-\tau(t)\rho) for \rho \in (0,1) and t>0. Then, z verifies the following transport equation

\left\{\begin{array}{l} \tau(t)z_{t}(\rho,t)+(1-\dot{\tau}(t)\rho)z_{\rho}(\rho,t)=0,\, t>0,\, \rho \in (0,1), \\ z(0,t)=y_{x}(0,t),\quad t>0, \\ z(\rho,0)=z_{0}(-\tau(0)\rho),\quad \rho \in (0,1). \end{array}\right.

Define U=(y, z)^T, then we can see (6) in the following setting

with

\begin{gathered} D(\mathcal{A}(t))=\left\{(y,z) \in \left(H^{3}(0,L)\cap H_{0}^{1}(0,L)\right)\times H^{1}(0,1), \ z(0)=y_{x}(0),\right. \\ \left. y_{x}(L)=\alpha y_{x}(0)+\beta z(1)\right\}.\end{gathered}

Note that, D(\mathcal{A}(t))=D(\mathcal{A}(0)), t>0. We are in the framework of Constant domain system (CD-system) and we can follow [5], to derive a well-posedness result of (6). Finally, the well-posedness of (KdVd) is obtained using fixed point arguments.

### 3 Exponential stability

Consider the Lyapunov candidate

V(t)=E(t)+\mu_{1}V_{1}(t)+\mu_{2}V_{2}(t),

where \mu_{1}, \mu_{2}>0 and

For \mu_{1}, \mu_{2}>0 small enough we can show

\begin{gathered} \dot{V}(t)+2\gamma V(t)\leq \left(\frac{L^{2}}{\pi^{2}}(\mu_{1}+\gamma+2L\mu_{1}\gamma)+\dfrac{2}{3}L^{3/2}r\mu_{1}-3\mu_{1}\right)\int_{0}^{L}y^{2}_{x}dx\\ +(\gamma|\beta|M+2\mu_{2}\gamma M-\mu_{2}(1-d))\int_{0}^{1}y_x^{2}(0,t-\tau(t)\rho)d\rho. \end{gathered}

Now, following [2], as L \lt \pi\sqrt{3}, it is possible to choose r small enough to have r \lt \frac{3(3\pi^{2}-L^{2})}{2L^{3/2}\pi^{2}}. Then, we can choose \gamma>0 such that \dot{V}(t)+2\gamma V(t)\leq 0 and hence V(t)\leq V(0)e^{-2\gamma t} for all t>0. Therefore, we obtain the exponential decay.

### Numerical Simulations

Consider L=1, T=10, initial conditions y_{0}(x)=0.5(1-\cos(2\pi x)), z_{0}(\rho)=-0.5\sin(2\pi\rho) and delay \tau(t)=d(1.5+\sin(t)).

For Figure 2 we use \alpha=0.1 and \beta=0.1. We can observe how the decay rate depends on the size of d. In particular, in the case d=1.3 which not satisfies (2), the energy is not decreasing.

FIGURE 2. Time-evolution of t \mapsto \ln(E(t)) for different values of d.

In Figure 3 we present a comparison between the action of time-varying delay and constant delay. We see how the energy associates to time-varying delay is oscillating between the associated to \tau_{max}=2.5d and \tau_{min}=0.5d.

FIGURE 3. Time-evolution of t \mapsto \ln(E(t)) in the case of constant and varying boundary delay.

### 5 Perspectives and Extensions

Following the works, [7,10], similar results can be obtained for the system

\begin{cases} y_{t}+y_{x}+y_{xxx}+yy_{x}+a(x)y(x,t)+b(x)y(x,t-\tau(t))=0,& t>0, \ x \in (0,L), \\ y(0,t)=y(L,t)=y_{x}(L,t)=0, &t>0, \\ y(x,0)=y_{0}(x), & x \in (0,L), \\ y(x,t-\tau(0))=z_{0}(x,t-\tau(0)), & 0\lt t \lt \tau(0), \ x \in (0,L), \end{cases}

Now we give some possible extension in this topic:
• Take in our results, time-varying delay that could vanish at some time 0\leq \tau(t)\leq M.
• Delay in the nonlinearity y(t-h,x)y_{x}(t,x) or y(t,x)y_{x}(t-h,x).
• Space-time varying delay \tau(t,x).
• Other equations as Kawahara (fifth order KdV).

#### References

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