Two scenarios on a potential smoothness breakdown for the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract

In this paper we construct two families of initial data being arbitrarily large under any scaling-invariant norm for which their corresponding weak solution to the three-dimensional Navier- Stokes equations become smooth on either [0, T1] or [T2,1), respectively, where T1 and T2 are two times prescribed previously. In particular, T1 can be arbitrarily large and T2 can be arbitrarily small. Therefore, possible formation of singularities would occur after a very long or short evolution time, respectively. We further prove that if a large part of the kinetic energy is consumed prior to the first (possible) blow-up time, then the global-in-time smoothness of the solutions follows for the two families of initial data.