Robustness of Polynomial Stability of Damped Wave Equations

In this paper we present new results on the preservation of polynomial stability of damped wave equations under addition of perturbing terms. We in particular introduce sufficient conditions for the stability of perturbed two-dimensional wave equations on rectangular domains, a one-dimensional weakly damped Webster’s equation, and a wave equation with an acoustic boundary condition. In the case of Webster’s equation, we use our results to compute explicit numerical bounds that guarantee the polynomial stability of the perturbed equation.