On the interaction between compressible inviscid flow and an elastic plate

We address a free boundary model for the compressible Euler equations where the free boundary, which is elastic, evolves according to a weakly damped fourth order hyperbolic equation forced by the fluid pressure. This system captures the interaction of an inviscid fluid with an elastic plate. We establish a priori estimates on local-in-time solutions in low regularity Sobolev spaces, namely with velocity and density initial data v0,R0 in H3. The main new device is a variable coefficients space tangential-time differential operator of order 1 with non-homogeneous boundary conditions, which captures the hyperbolic nature of the compressible Euler equations as well as the coupling with the structural dynamics.