Asymptotic behaviour of the semidiscrete FE approximations to weakly damped wave equations with minimal smoothness on initial data

Exponential decay estimates of a general linear weakly damped wave equation are studied with decay rate lying in a range. Based on the $C^0$-conforming finite element method to discretize spatial variables keeping temporal variable continuous, a semidiscrete system is analysed, and uniform decay estimates are derived with precisely the same decay rate as in the continuous case. Optimal error estimates with minimal smoothness assumptions on the initial data are established, which preserve exponential decay rate, and for a 2D problem, the maximum error bound is also proved. The present analysis is then generalized to include the problems with non-homogeneous forcing function, space-dependent damping, and problems with compensator. It is observed that decay rates are improved with large viscous damping and compensator. Finally, some numerical experiments are performed to validate the theoretical results established in this paper.