Phragmén–Lindelöf alternative result for the Navier–Stokes equations for steady compressible viscous flow

In this paper, the authors consider the Navier–Stokes equations for steady compressible viscous flow in three-dimensional cylindrical domain. A differential inequality for appropriate energy associated with the solutions of the Navier–Stokes isentropic flow in semi-infinite pipe is derived, from which the authors show a Phragmén–Lindelöf alternative result, i.e. the solutions for steady compressible viscous N–S flow problem either grow or decay exponentially as the distance from the entry section tends to infinity. In the decay case, the authors indicate how to bound explicitly the total energy in terms of data. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved