Global existence and asymptotic behavior for a coupled hyperbolic system with localized damping

In this paper we investigate the global existence and energy decay rate for the solution of a coupled hyperbolic system. The semi-explicit energy decay rate is established by using piecewise multiplier techniques and weighted integral inequality. We extend the energy decay result in Alabau-Boussouira [F. Alabau-Boussouira, Convexity and weighted integral inequalities for energy decay rates of nonlinear dissipative hyperbolic systems, Appl. Math. Optim. 51 (2005) 61–105] for a single equation to the coupled hyperbolic system.