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Nonlinear Plates Interacting with A Subsonic, Inviscid Flow via Kutta-Joukowski Interface Conditions

We analyze the well-posedness of a flow-plate interaction considered in [22, 24]. Specifically, we consider the Kutta-Joukowski boundary conditions for the flow [20, 28, 26], which ultimately give rise to a hyperbolic equation in the half-space (for the flow) with mixed boundary conditions. This boundary condition has been considered previously in the lower-dimensional interactions [1, 2], and dramatically changes the properties of the flow-plate interaction and requisite analytical techniques. We present results on well-posedness of the fluid-structure interaction with the Kutta-Joukowsky flow conditions in force. The semigroup approach to the proof utilizes an abstract setup related to that in [16] but requires (1) the use of a Neumann-flow map to address a Zaremba type elliptic problem and (2) a trace regularity assumption on the acceleration potential of the flow. This assumption is linked to invertibility of singular integral operators which are analogous to the finite Hilbert transform in two dimensions. (We show the validity of this assumption when the model is reduced to a two dimensional flow interacting with a one dimensional structure; this requires microlocal techniques.) Our results link the analysis in [16] to that in [1, 2].