Navier-Stokes equations in a curved thin domain, Part II: global existence of a strong solution

Abstract: We consider the Navier-Stokes equations in a three-dimensional curved thin domain around a given closed surface under Navier's slip boundary conditions. When the thickness of the thin domain is sufficiently small, we establish the global existence of a strong solution for large data. We also show several estimates for the strong solution with constants explicitly depending on the thickness of the thin domain. The proofs of these results are based on a standard energy method and a good product estimate for the convection and viscous terms following from a detailed study of average operators in the thin direction. We use the average operators to decompose a three-dimensional vector field on the thin domain into the almost two-dimensional average part and the residual part, and derive good estimates for them which play an important role in the proof of the product estimate.