Global smooth solutions of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations with density-dependent viscosity

AbstractIn this paper we study a free boundary problem for the viscous, compressible, heat conducting, one-dimensional real fluids. More precisely, the viscosity is assumed to be a power function of density, i.e., μ(ρ)=ρα, where ρ denotes the density of fluids and α is a positive constant. In addition, the equations of state include and are more general than perfect flows which only depend linearly on temperature. The global existence (uniqueness) of smooth solutions is established with α∈(0,12] for general, large initial data, which improves the previous results. Moreover, it is also shown that the solutions will not develop vacuum, mass concentration or heat concentration in a finite time provided the initial data are bounded and smooth, and do not contain vacuum