Existence of a Stationary Navier-Stokes Flow Past a Rigid Body, with Application to Starting Problem in Higher Dimensions

We consider the large time behavior of the Navier-Stokes flow past a rigid body in Rn with n >= 3. We first construct a small stationary solution possessing the optimal summability at spatial infinity, which is the same as that of the Oseen fundamental solution. When the translational velocity of the body gradually increases and is maintained after a certain finite time, we then show that the nonstationary fluid motion converges to the stationary solution corresponding to a small terminal velocity of the body as time t -> infinity in Lq with q is an element of [n,infinity]. This is called Finn's starting problem and the three-dimensional case was affirmatively solved by Galdi et al. (Arch Ration Mech Anal 138: 307-318, 1997). The present paper extends Galdi et al. (1997) to the case of higher dimensions. Even for the three-dimensional case, our theorem provides new convergence rate, that is determined by the summability of the stationary solution at infinity and seems to be sharp.