Abstract: Concerns with the nonexistence of global solutions to the initial boundary value problem for a nonlinear hyperbolic equation with material damping. Nonexitence theorems of global solutions to the above problem are proved by the energy method, Jensen inequality and the concavity method, respectively. As applications of our main results, three examples are given.

Key words: nonexistence of global solution, initial-boundary value problem, nonlinear hyperbolic equation, material damping