Local well-posedness and blow-up for the restricted fourth-order Prandtl equation

Abstract

We prove local well-posedness and finite-time blow-up for a restricted fourth-order Prandtl equation posed on the half-line with clamped boundary conditions. The equation arises from a two-dimensional fourth-order Prandtl system via an ansatz reduction, and its nonlinearity involves a nonlocal integral term. To close a Duhamel fixed-point argument, we need uniform $L^1$ bounds for the associated half-line biharmonic heat kernel. We establish uniform $L^1$ estimates for the kernel and its derivatives, and we show that the semigroup preserves spatial regularity under appropriate compatibility conditions, using an alternative representation derived by integration by parts. These kernel estimates yield local existence and uniqueness for the restricted model and allow us to construct solutions that blow-up in finite time.