The steady Navier-Stokes equations in a system of unbounded channels with sources and sinks

Abstract

The steady motion of a viscous incompressible fluid in a junction of unbounded channels with sources and sinks is modeled through the Navier-Stokes equations under inhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. In contrast to many previous works, the domain is not assumed to be simply-connected and the fluxes are not assumed to be small. In this very general setting, we prove the existence of a solution with a uniformly bounded Dirichlet integral in every compact subset. This is a generalization of the classical Ladyzhenskaya-Solonnikov result obtained under the additional assumption of zero boundary conditions. For small data of the problem we also prove the unique solvability and attainability of Couette-Poiseuille flows at infinity. The main novelty of our approach is the proof of the corresponding Leray-Hopf-type inequality by Leray's reductio ad absurdum argument (since the standard Hopf cutoff extension procedure does not work for general boundary data). For this contradiction approach, we use some fine properties of weak solutions to the Euler system based on Morse-Sard-type theorems in Sobolev spaces obtained by Bourgain, Korobkov & Kristensen.