Global existence and asymptotic behavior of the Westervelt--hyperbolic Pennes system

Abstract: In this work, we investigate the global existence and asymptotic behavior of a mathematical model of nonlinear ultrasonic heating based on a coupled system of the Westervelt equation and the hyperbolic Pennes bioheat equation (Westervelt--Pennes--Cattaneo model). First, we prove that the solution exists globally in time, provided that the lower-order Sobolev norms of the initial data are considered to be small, while the higher-order norms can be arbitrarily large. This is done using a continuity argument together with some interpolation inequalities. Second, we prove an exponential decay of the solution under the same smallness assumptions on the initial data.