1. Introduction
The regularity problem for axially symmetric solutions to the Navier–Stokes equations has a long history. However, there are only two results where the global regular axially symmetric solutions are proved, assuming the vanishing of the angular component of velocity (see papers [
1] by O.A. Ladyzhenskaya and [
2] by M.R. Ukhovskii and V.I. Yudovich).
Other results (see the papers cited in [
3,
4,
5,
6,
7]) describe the existence of global regular axially symmetric solutions imposing different Serrin-type conditions. The conditions are such that certain coordinates, either of velocity or of derivatives of velocity or vorticity, belong to
spaces for appropriately chosen parameters
p and
q.
This paper closely aligns with the results presented by O.A. Ladyzhenskaya, M.R. Ukhovskii, and V.I. Yudovich, as the vanishing of the stream function divided by the radius implies the existence of global regular axially symmetric solutions. The aim of this paper is to provide a proof of the global estimate (24).
The estimate can imply any global regularity of solutions to problem (6), assuming appropriate regularity of data.
We must emphasize that the methods and proofs presented in this paper are completely new. The proofs and results in
Section 3,
Section 5, and
Section 6 are original.
Before the formal introduction starts, we outline the main steps of the proof of Theorem 1. The main difficulty in the regularity theory of the Navier–Stokes equations lies in handling the nonlinear terms. We need to transform them in such a way that they can be absorbed by the main linear terms. In this paper, we consider problems (17)–(20) for functions and defined by (16). Applying the energy method, we derive inequality (111) with a strongly nonlinear term denoted by .
The main task of this paper is to estimate by quantities that can be absorbed by the terms from the l.h.s. of (111).
is estimated in (122). Using notation (132), we derive from (111) and (122) the inequality (see (134))
where depends on , and , .
For , the Young inequality can be applied, so (133) holds. The existence of such a positive follows from inequality (173), which can be written in the following form:
where depends on .
Inequality implies the existence of the positive . For , we were not able to apply the Young inequality in , so we could not prove Theorem 1.
Hence, is probably the most important inequality in this paper. It is a totally new result.
In the next step, we eliminate , . To show this, we need to delve into the proof of Lemma 13. To derive (141) from (140), we need the estimate
The Hardy inequality implies that does not hold for 6 but holds for any number less than 6. It is denoted by . Inequality follows from (202).
Then, we derive (145). Using (133) in (145) yields the following inequality:
To apply the Young inequality in , we require that . It is shown in Remark 4 that the inequality holds. We need to be close to 6. Then, implies (137).
Moreover, to prove (137), we need the existence of such solutions to problem (6), where
is not small. The existence of such solutions is proven in
Appendix A. Hence, for such local solutions, we prove global estimate (24). Once we have (24), we can extend the local solution incrementally over time.
Finally, we can easily derive estimate (152) because appears in (137) with arbitrarily small power.
Using estimates (137) and (152) in (133) implies (24) and proves Theorem 1.
In this paper, we prove the existence of global regular axially symmetric solutions to the Navier–Stokes equations in a cylindrical domain
:
where
a and
R are the given positive numbers. We denote by
the Cartesian coordinates. It is assumed that the
-axis is the axis of symmetry of
.
Moreover,
where
is parallel to the axis of symmetry and
is perpendicular to it.
meets the axis of symmetry at
.
To describe the considered problem, we introduce cylindrical coordinates
r,
, and
z by the relations
The following orthonormal system
is connected to the cylindrical coordinates.
Any vector,
u, for the axially symmetric motions can be decomposed as follows:
where
,
, and
are cylindrical coordinates of
u.
Therefore, velocity
v and vorticity
are decomposed in the form
and
The paper is devoted to the proof of global regular axially symmetric solutions to the problem
where
is the velocity of the fluid,
is the pressure,
is the external force field, and
is the constant viscosity coefficient.
Expressing problem (6) in the cylindrical coordinates of velocity yields
where we have the periodic boundary conditions on
and
Formulating problem (6) in terms of the cylindrical coordinates of vorticity implies
and we have boundary conditions (7)
5 on
and the periodic boundary conditions on
, where
and
The function
is called swirl. It is a solution to the problem
The cylindrical components of vorticity can be described in terms of the cylindrical components of the velocity and swirl in the following form
Equation
implies the existence of the stream function
, which is a solution to the problem
Moreover, cylindrical components of velocity can be expressed in terms of the stream function in the following way
Introduce the pair
Formula (6) from [
8] implies that quantities (16) satisfy the following equations
and
We add the following initial and boundary conditions to solutions of (17) and (18)
Next, we express cylindrical coordinates of velocity in terms of
The aim of this paper is to prove the existence of global regular axially symmetric solutions to problem (6). For this purpose, we have to find a global estimate that guarantees the existence of global regular solutions.
Function
is a solution to the problem
where
We have
.
To state the main result, we first introduce the necessary assumptions.
Assumption 1. Assume that the following quantities are finite:where and are introduced in (46) and (52), respectively, and and are introduced in (159) and (160), respectively. Letwhere is an arbitrarily small positive number. Moreover,is defined in Lemma 16. Next,where , , , and appear in (111). In Lemma 13, the following quantity is defined
Finally, in Lemma 14, we introduce the quantity
The main result is as follows:
Theorem 1. Assume that Assumption 1 holds. Then, there exists an increasing positive function ϕ, such that Remark 1. Estimate (24) implies any regularity of solutions to problem (6), assuming sufficient regularity of data.
To prove (24), we require that and vanish on the axis of symmetry.
Proof of Theorem 1. Inequality (113) in the form
is the first step of the proof of (24), where
,
and
Our aim is to estimate
and
by a product of norms
,
.
Since the
-estimate of swirl
is bounded by
(see Lemma 2) and
, we obtain the estimates
To examine estimate (26), we recall that
is a solution to problem (22).
In Lemma 4, we prove the existence of weak solutions to problem (22) and derive the estimate (56)
In
Section 3, we increase the regularity of weak solutions by deriving estimates for higher derivatives.
From (82), we have
The estimate holds for the weak solutions to problem (22) because [
9] yields the expansion of
near the axis of symmetry
Hence,
and the norm
can be finite.
To estimate
, we need
The estimate holds for such a class of regularized weak solutions to problem (22), where
This means that in expansion (29), we have
.
The existence of solutions to problem (22) (also see (61)), satisfying restriction (31) and estimate (30), follows from the theory developed by Kondratiev (see [
10]) for elliptic boundary value problems in domains with cones in weighted Sobolev spaces.
In this paper, the existence is proven in Lemmas 8 and 17. From [
10], it also follows that we can prove the existence of different solutions to problem (22) belonging to different weighted Sobolev spaces.
The difference between such two distinct solutions is equal to the expression derived from the Cauchy theorem for complex functions related to contour integration. This is described in more detail in [
11].
Restriction (31) means that we have to work with a very restricted class of weak solutions to (22). This also means that must vanish on the axis of symmetry.
Using estimates (28) and (30) in (25) yields
We have to emphasize that we are not able to prove estimate (24) without restriction (31).
Now, we integrate (120) with respect to time. Then, we obtain
Integrating (32) with respect to time and adding to (33) yields
Now, we have to estimate the first term on the r.h.s. of (34).
Introducing the quantity (see (132))
and recalling that constant
is introduced in Assumption 1, inequality (34) takes the form
where the first integral is called
.
Using estimate (123) and estimate of
in the proof of Lemma 11, we obtain from (36) the inequality
where
,
,
.
To derive any estimate from (37), we use (173) in the form
where
can be assumed to be an arbitrarily small positive number and
,
, and
are defined in Assumption 1. This is a very important estimate because the square of
depends linearly on
.
Using (38) in (37) yields the following (the estimate of
is described in (122)):
where
and
depend on
,
, and
.
Since
,
are less than 2 Lemma 12 yields the inequality
where
.
Setting
and assuming that
is not small, we derive (137) in the form
where
is a positive number.
The smallness of
, which must be excluded in the proof of (41), is described in
Appendix A.
To prove (41), we have to pass from (140) to (141). Therefore, we need the following estimate:
where
and
are very close to 6. Moreover,
is such a number where (42) holds (also see Remark 8).
Estimate (42) is crucial to the proof of (141), which is very important in deriving (151).
Inequalities (151) and (152) imply the main result of this paper: estimate (24).
Replacing
with 6 estimate (42) takes the form
where the r.h.s. cannot be estimated by
.
Estimate (42) follows from Lemma 18 and imposes the following additional restrictions on
:
However, the theory developed in [
9] implies that
.
Exploiting (41) in (40) yields
where
and
are positive finite numbers.
Finally, we find the estimate for (see (152)). Using (152) in (45) yields (24). This ends the proof of Theorem 1. □
The problem of regularity of axially symmetric solutions to the Navier–Stokes equations has a long history. The first regularity results in the case of vanishing swirl were independently derived by O. A. Ladyzhenskaya and Ukhovskii-Yudovich, as referenced in [
1,
2]. Many references concerning the nonvanishing swirl case can be found in [
3].
We have to emphasize that we were able to prove Theorem 1 because the theory of weighted Sobolev spaces developed in [
11] was used.
7. Estimates for the Stream Function in Weighted Sobolev Spaces
Recall that the stream function is a solution to problem (22). To increase the regularity of weak solutions, we need appropriate estimates for , assuming sufficient regularity of the vorticity .
Remark 7. In Lemma 4, the existence of weak solutions to problem (22) satisfying estimate (56) is proven. Inequality (62) implies that the weak solution belongs to and the estimate holdsAssuming that , estimates (63) and (64) increase the regularity of , such that and the estimate holdsEstimate (181) is derived using the technique of the energy method. However, this method is not sufficiently robust to derive an estimate for . Moreover, estimate (181) is not sufficient to prove estimate (24) of Theorem 1. To prove Theorem 1 we need estimates (85) and (93). To prove the estimates, we need the theory of weighted Sobolev spaces developed by Kondratiev [
10], which is used to examine elliptic boundary value problems in domains with cones.
Unfortunately, estimates (85) and (93) hold for weak solutions where vanishes on the axis of symmetry. This implies that the coordinate of velocity must also vanish on the axis of symmetry. Therefore, Theorem 1 is applicable to a smaller class than the class of weak solutions. This indicates that the regularity problem for axially symmetric solutions to the Navier–Stokes equations is only partially solved.
Now, we show the existence of solutions to problem (22) in weighted Sobolev spaces.
Lemma 17. Assume that is a solution to (61). Assume that , .
Proof. To prove the lemma, we need weighted Sobolev spaces defined by Fourier transform (58) and introduced in (59) and (60). Therefore, to examine problem (22) in weighted Sobolev spaces, we have to derive estimates with respect to
r and
z, separately. To derive an estimate with respect to
r, we have to examine solutions to (22) independently, as well in a neighborhood of the axis of symmetry, such as in a neighborhood located in a positive distance from it. To perform such considerations, we treat
z as a parameter and introduce a partition of unity
, such that
and
where
is fixed in such a way that
.
Let , and , , . Moreover, functions and are smooth.
Then, we obtain from (22) the following two problems
where
and
where
We temporarily simplify the notation using
Then, (183) and (184) become
and
Next, we use the simplified notation
First, we consider problem (186). We rewrite it in the form
For a fixed
, we treat (189) as
Multiplying (190) by
yields
or equivalently
Introduce the new variable
Since
, we see that (191) takes the form
Utilizing the Fourier transform (58) to (193), we have
For
we have
We introduce the quantity
Consider the case where
and
. Then,
. Theorem 1.1 from Section 1 in [
10] (also see Lemma 3.1 from [
11]) yields the following:
Let , and does not have poles on the line .
Then, we have
Using (60) and
, we obtain
Passing to variable
r yields
Using notation (185) and the estimate for the weak solutions, we obtain from (197) the inequality
For solutions to (187), we have the estimate
In view of notation (185) we obtain
Adding (198) and (200), integrating the result with respect to
z, and using (56) yield
Replacing
with
, and
with
, we obtain estimate (182) from (201) and (63). This ends the proof. □
Lemma 18. Assume that is a solution to (61). Assume that , , .
Proof. Recall the partition of unity introduced in the proof of Lemma 17. Also recall the local problems (183) and (184), as well as notation (185). Then, we can examine problems (186) and (187). First, we examine problem (186).
Applying the Mellin transform, any solution to (190) can be expressed in the form (194).
In this case, we introduce the following quantity:
Since operator
does not have poles on the line
, we have (see Theorem 1.1 from Section 1 in [
10])
Using (60) for
, we obtain
In view of equivalence (59), inequality (205) takes the form
where
and
.
Integrating (206) with respect to
z, and exploiting notation (185), yield
For solutions to problem (187) and notation (185), we obtain
From (207) and (208), as well as the Hardy inequality (see [
14] (Chapter 1, Section 2.16)):
we obtain
Using estimates (56), (62), (63) in (210) implies (202) and ends the proof. □
Remark 8. Since , the Hardy inequality (209) does not need .