The coupling system of Kirchhoff and Euler-Bernoulli plates with logarithmic source terms: Strong damping versus weak damping of variable-exponent type

In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of solutions of the dissipative coupled system where we have interactions between a Kirchhoff plate and a Euler-Bernoulli plate. We investigate the interaction between the internal strong damping acting in the Kirchhoff equation and internal weak damping of variable-exponent type acting in the Euler-Bernoulli equation. By using the potential well, the energy method (multiplier method) combined with the logarithmic Sobolev inequality, we prove the global existence and derive the stability results. We show that the solutions of this system decay to zero sometimes exponentially and other times polynomially. We find explicit decay rates that depend on the weak damping of the variable-exponent type. This outcome extends earlier results in the literature.