TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF THE PHILIPPINES

363 P. CASAL ST., QUIAPO MANILA

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

A Journal Critique on
The existence of a strong solution to the Navier-Stokes equations
by Mukhtarbay Otelbaev

SUBMITTED BY:

VENZON, KENNETH LOUIE H.

BS ChE / 4TH YEAR / CH41FB1

SUBMITTED TO:

ENGR. JOPETH RAMIS

INSTRUCTOR

December 10, 2014

Introduction

The journal of Mukhtarbay Otelbaev has been proposed last January 2013 on an attempt to
solve the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the seven Millennium Prize
problems offered by the Clay Mathematical Institute. The journal was entitled The existence of a
strong solution to the Navier-Stokes equations is written in russian and is being translated by
his students so it can be further studied by other mathematicians. I have found an article that
has translated the article but it only includes the abstract, introduction and the statement of the
main result. I would base my critique on what information is given on the said translation and
other discussions in the internet to provide a general idea on the claims of a solution on NavierStokes equation.

Background of the Study

The Navier-Stokes equation is one of the governing equations of fluid dynamics and is an
expression of conservation of momentum in a fluid. It has been known for more than 150 years
and can be solved numerically for many solutions but some have not been proven. The Clay
Mathematics Institute is asking for a proof of the existence and smoothness of the NavierStokes equation for an incompressible fluid in three-dimensions. Otelbaev believes that he has
found a solution to the problem. From what I read, the solution is presented with periodic spatial
boundary conditions and numerous publications of other mathematicians for references to
provide a proposed solution method.

Results
The translated main result of the article shows an E.Hopfs classic result which provides a
generalized solution satisifying the bound

The estimate is arrived at easily if the -th equation of the system is multiplied by uk, and,
nothing the equality div u= 0, as well as the initial and boundary conditions, the equations are all
integrated and summed for all k = 1, 2, 3. In the case when the number of spatial variables is
not less than three, the bound is insufficient for perturbation theory as the most important
reason why it has been unsolvable.

Theorem 1 shows the main result of the paper and it enables the use of perturbation theory, and
improving the smoothness of a solution with increasing smoothness in the problem data. As he
also noted that if the spatial dimension is greater than five, the strong solvability would prevent
the use of perturbation theory as he was only concerned on the three-dimensional case.

Conclusion
The paper has been limited to the chosen definitions convenient to Otelbaev. He has examined
the case where a general domain is used, and instead the period boundary conditions of k =1,
2, 3 and

0 t a ,

other conditions are also used. As stated in the results, theorem 1

completes the solution for the existence and smoothness of solutions to the Navier-Stokes
equations for an incompressible viscous liquid. It is not a general solution to the Navier-Stokes
equation but it may lead to a better understanding of the nature of the equation.

Critique
The paper of Otelbaev have garnered attention to other mathematicians and scientists to further
evaluate his study. In the past few months, they have found an error in his proposition
specifically 6.3 because of the inequality in equation 6.34 which he later acknowledged and
would fix in the English translation. The paper relied on the perturbation theory which is a
method to find an approximate solution to a problem, by starting from an exact solution of a
related problem. I believe that in using this theory, there would also be marginal errors in his
assumptions as it is only provide by a related problem. Another thing is that he mentioned the
use of other papers that are not yet published or proven to be correct meaning that the
hypothesis of another mathematician is being used to prove another hypothesis which would be
irrelevant if the first hypothesis would not be proven. The paper is full of hypothesis and another
scientist named Terry Tao has provided a counterexample to disprove his hypothesis in theorem
6.1. The paper may not suffice to prove the existence and smoothness of the solution he
proposes and the Navier-Stokes equation for an incompressible fluid in three-dimensions would

still remain as an unsolvable case but would hopefully lead to a better understanding of the
equation.