On the lifespan and the blowup mechanism of smooth solutions to a class of 2-D nonlinear wave equations with small initial data

This paper is concerned with the lifespan of and the blowup mechanism for smooth solutions to the 2-D nonlinear wave equation ∂ t 2 u − ∑ i = 1 2 ∂ i ( c i 2 ( u ) ∂ i u ) \partial _t^2u-\sum _{i=1}^2\partial _i(c_i^2(u)\partial _iu) = 0 =0 , where c i ( u ) ∈ C ∞ ( R n ) c_i(u)\in C^{\infty }(\mathbb {R}^n) , c i ( 0 ) ≠ 0 c_i(0)\neq 0 , and ( c 1 ′ ( 0 ) ) 2 + ( c 2 ′ ( 0 ) ) 2 ≠ 0 (c_1’(0))^2+(c_2’(0))^2\neq 0 . This equation has an interesting physical background as it arises from the pressure-gradient model in compressible fluid dynamics and also in nonlinear variational wave equations. Under the initial condition ( u ( 0 , x ) , ∂ t u ( 0 , x ) ) = ( ε u 0 ( x ) , ε u 1 ( x ) ) (u(0,x), \partial _tu(0,x))=(\varepsilon u_0(x), \varepsilon u_1(x)) with u 0 ( x ) , u 1 ( x ) ∈ C 0 ∞ ( R 2 ) u_0(x), u_1(x)\in C_0^{\infty }(\mathbb {R}^2) , and ε > 0 \varepsilon >0 is small, we will show that the classical solution u ( t , x ) u(t,x) stops to be smooth at some finite time T ε T_{\varepsilon } . Moreover, blowup occurs due to the formation of a singularity of the first-order derivatives ∇ t , x u ( t , x ) \nabla _{t,x}u(t,x) , while u ( t , x ) u(t,x) itself is continuous up to the blowup time  T ε T_{\varepsilon } .