Cauchy problem for quasi-linear wave equations with viscous damping

The paper studies the global existence and asymptotic behavior of weak solutions to the Cauchy problem for quasi-linear wave equations with viscous damping. It proves that when p⩾max{m,α}, where m+1, α+1 and p+1 are, respectively, the growth orders of the nonlinear strain terms, the nonlinear damping term and the source term, the Cauchy problem admits a global weak solution, which decays to zero according to the rate of polynomial as t→∞, as long as the initial data are taken in a certain potential well and the initial energy satisfies a bounded condition. Especially in the case of space dimension N=1, the solutions are regularized and so generalized and classical solution both prove to be unique. Comparison of the results with previous ones shows that there exist clear boundaries similar to thresholds among the growth orders of the nonlinear terms, the states of the initial energy and the existence, asymptotic behavior and nonexistence of global solutions of the Cauchy problem.