Uniform Regularity for free-boundary navier-stokes equations with surface tension

Tarek Elgindi, Donghyun Lee

Published 2014-03-05, updated 2014-11-03Version 2

We study the zero-viscosity limit of free boundary Navier-Stokes equations with surface tension in $\mathbb{R}^3$ thus extending the work of Masmoudi and Rousset [1] to take surface tension into account. Due to the presence of boundary layers, we are unable to pass to the zero-viscosity limit in the usual Sobolev spaces. Indeed, as viscosity tends to zero, normal derivatives at the boundary should blow-up. To deal with this problem, we solve the free boundary problem in the so-called Sobolev co-normal spaces (after fixing the boundary via a coordinate transformation). We prove estimates which are uniform in the viscosity. And after inviscid limit process, we get the local existence of free-boundary Euler equation with surface tension. One of the main differences between this work and the work [1] is our use of time-derivative estimates and certain properties of the Dirichlet-Neumann operator. In a forthcoming work, we discuss how we can take the simultaneous limit of zero viscosity and surface tension [].