A note on spherically symmetric isentropic compressible flows with density-dependent viscosity coefficients

Abstract

In this note, by constructing suitable approximate solutions, we prove the existence of global weak solutions to the compressible Navier-Stokes equations with density-dependent viscosity coefficients in the whole space $\mathbb{R}^N$, $N\geq2$ (or exterior domain), when the initial data are spherically symmetric. In particular, we prove the existence of spherically symmetric solutions to the Saint-Venant model for shallow water in the whole space (or exterior domain).