Sharp estimates of the energy for the solutions of some dissipative second order evolution problems

Abstract

We establish precise estimates of the energy decay for certain second order dissipative problems concentrating our attention on the effect of the nonlinearity on the constants depending on the initial data in such estimates. In general, when damping terms are superlinear such constants turn out to be superlinear functions of the initial energy. We consider nonlinear terms growing either polynomially or exponentially and apply our results to some concrete partial and ordinary differential equations. In certain particular cases, the optimality of the obtained estimates is also proved.