Blowup analysis for a quasi-exact 1D model of 3D Euler and Navier-Stokes

We study the singularity formation of a quasi-exact 1D model proposed by Hou and Li (2008 Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 61 661-97). This model is based on an approximation of the axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations in the r direction. The solution of the 1D model can be used to construct an exact solution of the original 3D Euler and Navier-Stokes equations if the initial angular velocity, angular vorticity, and angular stream function are linear in r. This model shares many intrinsic properties similar to those of the 3D Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. It captures the competition between advection and vortex stretching as in the 1D De Gregorio (De Gregorio 1990 J. Stat. Phys. 59 1251-63; De Gregorio 1996 Math. Methods Appl. Sci. 19 1233-55) model. We show that the inviscid model with weakened advection and smooth initial data or the original 1D model with Holder continuous data develops a self-similar blowup. We also show that the viscous model with weakened advection and smooth initial data develops a finite time blowup. To obtain sharp estimates for the nonlocal terms, we perform an exact computation for the low-frequency Fourier modes and extract damping in leading order estimates for the high-frequency modes using singularly weighted norms in the energy estimates. The analysis for the viscous case is more subtle since the viscous terms produce some instability if we just use singular weights. We establish the blowup analysis for the viscous model by carefully designing an energy norm that combines a singularly weighted energy norm and a sum of high-order Sobolev norms.