Almost Global Solutions of Kirchhoff Equation

This paper is concerned with the original Kirchhoff equation \aligned & ₓₓu- (1+₀^{|ₓu|² dx) ₗₗu=0, \\&u (t, 0) =u (t, ) =0. aligned. We obtain almost global existence and stability of solutions for almost any small initial data of size. In Sobolev spaces, the time of existence and stability is of order ^-r for arbitrary positive integer r. In Gevrey and analytic spaces, the time is of order e^||²{c||} with some positive constant c. To achieve these, we build rational normal form for infinite dimensional reversible vector fields without external parameters. We emphasize that for vector fields, the homological equation and the definition of rational normal form are significantly different from those for Hamiltonian functions.