Existence of strong solutions for a system of interaction between a compressible viscous fluid and a wave equation^*

In this article, we consider a fluid–structure interaction system where the fluid is viscous and compressible and where the structure is a part of the boundary of the fluid domain and is deformable. The fluid is governed by the barotropic compressible Navier–Stokes system, whereas the structure displacement is described by a wave equation. We show that the corresponding coupled system admits a unique, strong solution for an initial fluid density and an initial fluid velocity in H³ and for an initial deformation and an initial deformation velocity in H⁴ and H³ respectively. The reference configuration for the fluid domain is a rectangular cuboid with the elastic structure being the top face. We use a modified Lagrangian change of variables to transform the moving fluid domain into the rectangular cuboid and then analyze the corresponding linear system coupling a transport equation (for the density), a heat-type equation, and a wave equation. The corresponding results for this linear system and estimations of the coefficients coming from the change of variables allow us to perform a fixed point argument and to prove the existence and uniqueness of strong solutions for the nonlinear system, locally in time.