AbstractUnder the acoustic boundary conditions, the initial boundary value problem of a wave equation with multiple nonlinear source terms is considered. This paper gives the energy functional of regular solutions for the wave equation and proves the decreasing property of the energy functional. Firstly, the existence of a global solution for the wave equation is proved by the Faedo–Galerkin method. Then, in order to obtain the nonexistence of global solutions for the wave equation, a new functional is defined. When the initial energy is less than zero, the special properties of the new functional are proved by the method of contraction. Finally, the conditions for the nonexistence of global solutions of the wave equation with acoustic boundary conditions are analyzed by using these special properties.