We study a fourth‐order hyperbolic equation involving Kirchhoff type
‐Laplacian and superlinear source, subject to zero Navier boundary condition,
where
is an open bounded domain in
with
;
denotes the maximal existence time; and
and
are constants. For
, using auxiliary function method and Sobolev inequality, we prove that there are only global solutions. For
, we obtain the optimal classification of initial energy and Nehari energy, which guarantees the existence of blow‐up solutions and global solutions. In the critical case
, we find out that the coefficients of the Kirchhoff term and the superlinear source play important role in separating out the property of weak solutions.