Energy decay rates for the von Kármán system of thermoelastic plates (Q1978226)

The authors consider a coupled system of three nonlinear equations, modelling free vibrations of a thin elastic plate and taking thermal effects and rotational inertia into account. For initial data such that the energy \(E(t)\) is bounded by a parameter \(R\) at the time \(t=0\), an explicit estimate of the exponential energy decay rate is found in terms of \(R\). One of the main contribution of the paper is the construction of an explicit Lyapunov function for the nonlinear system.