Local Controllability to Trajectories of the Magnetohydrodynamic Equations

In this paper we prove the local controllability to trajectories of the three dimensional magnetohydrodynamic equations by means of two internal controls, one in the velocity equations and the other in the magnetic field equations and both localized in an arbitrary small subset with not empty interior of the domain. This paper improves the previous results (Barbu et al. in Comm Pure Appl Math 56:732–783, 2003; Barbu et al. in Adv Differ Equ 10:481–504, 2005; Havârneanu et al. in Adv Differ Equ 11:893–929, 2006; Havârneanu, in SIAM J Control Optim 46:1802–1830, 2007) where the second control is not localized and it allows to deduce the local controllability to trajectories with boundary controls. The proof relies on the Carleman inequality for the Stokes system of Imanuvilov et al. (Carleman estimates for second order nonhomogeneous parabolic equations, preprint) to deal with the velocity equations and on a new Carleman inequality for a Dynamo-type equation to deal with the magnetic field equations.     

On the Formulation of Continuum Thermodynamic Models for Solids as General Equations for Non-equilibrium Reversible-Irreversible Coupling

The purpose of this work is the comparison of some aspects of the formulation of material models in the context of continuum thermodynamics (e.g., ?ilhavý in The mechanics and thermodynamics of continuous media, Springer, Berlin, 1997) with their formulation in the form of a General Equation for Non-Equilibrium Reversible-Irreversible Coupling (GENERIC: e.g., Grmela and Öttinger in Phys. Rev. E 56: 6620–6632, 1997; Öttinger and Grmela in Phys. Rev. E 56: 6633–6655, 1997; Öttinger in Beyond equilibrium thermodynamics, Wiley, New York, 2005; Grmela in J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 165: 980–998, 2010). A GENERIC represents a generalization of the Ginzburg-Landau model for the approach of non-equilibrium systems to thermodynamic equilibrium. Originally developed to formulate non-equilibrium thermodynamic models for complex fluids, it has recently been applied to anisotropic inelastic solids in a Eulerian setting (Hütter and Tervoort in J. Non-Newton. Fluid Mech. 152: 45–52, 2008; 53–65, 2008; Adv. Appl. Mech. 42: 254–317, 2009) as well as to damage mechanics (Hütter and Tervoort in Acta Mech. 201: 297–312, 2008). In the current work, attention is focused for simplicity on the case of thermoelastic solids with heat conduction and viscosity in a Lagrangian setting (e.g., ?ilhavý in The mechanics and thermodynamics of continuous media, Springer, Berlin, 1997, Chaps. 9–12). In the process, the relation of the two formulations to each other is investigated in detail. A particular point in this regard is the concept of dissipation and its model representation in both contexts.     

Comparison of dynamical cores for NWP models: comparison of COSMO and Dune

We present a range of numerical tests comparing the dynamical cores of the operationally used numerical weather prediction (NWP) model COSMO and the university code Dune, focusing on their efficiency and accuracy for solving benchmark test cases for NWP. The dynamical core of COSMO is based on a finite difference method whereas the Dune core is based on a Discontinuous Galerkin method. Both dynamical cores are briefly introduced stating possible advantages and pitfalls of the different approaches. Their efficiency and effectiveness is investigated, based on three numerical test cases, which require solving the compressible viscous and non-viscous Euler equations. The test cases include the density current (Straka et al. in Int J Numer Methods Fluids 17:1–22, 1993), the inertia gravity (Skamarock and Klemp in Mon Weather Rev 122:2623–2630, 1994), and the linear hydrostatic mountain waves of (Bonaventura in J Comput Phys 158:186–213, 2000).     

Traveling Wave Solutions for a Predator?CPrey System With Sigmoidal Response Function

We study the existence of traveling wave solutions for a diffusive predator?Cprey system. The system considered in this paper is governed by a Sigmoidal response function which in some applications is more realistic than the Holling type I, II responses, and more general than a simplified form of the Holling type III response considered before. Our method is an improvement to the original method introduced in the work of Dunbar (J Math Biol 17:11?C32, 1983; SIAM J Appl Math 46:1057?C1078, 1986). A bounded Wazewski set is used in this work while unbounded Wazewski sets were used in Dunbar (1983, 1986). The existence of traveling wave solutions connecting two equilibria is established by using the original Wazewski??s theorem which is much simpler than the extended version in Dunbar??s work.     

The Two-Dimensional Euler Equations on Singular Domains

We establish the existence of global weak solutions of the two-dimensional incompressible Euler equations for a large class of non-smooth open sets. Loosely, these open sets are the complements (in a simply connected domain) of a finite number of obstacles with positive Sobolev capacity. Existence of weak solutions with L ^p vorticity is deduced from a property of domain continuity for the Euler equations that relates to the so-called γ-convergence of open sets. Our results complete those obtained for convex domains in Taylor (Progress in Nonlinear Differential Equations and their Applications, Vol. 42, 2000), or for domains with asymptotically small holes (Iftimie et al. in Commun Partial Differ Equ 28(1–2), 349–379, 2003; Lopes Filho in SIAM J Math Anal 39(2), 422–436, 2007).     

Existence and Stability of Solutions for Steady Flows of Fibre Suspension Flows

We establish existence, uniqueness, convergence and stability of solutions to the equations of steady flows of fibre suspension flows. The existence of a unique steady solution is proven by using an iterative scheme. One of the restrictions imposed on the data confirms a well known fact proven in Galdi and Reddy (J Non-Newtonian Fluid Mech 83:205–230, 1999), Munganga and Reddy (Math Models Methods Appl Sci 12:1177–1203, 2002) and Munganga et al. (J Non-Newtonian fluid Mech 92:135–150, 2000) that the particle number N _p must be less than 35/2. Exact solutions are calculated for Couette and Poiseuille flows. Solutions of Poiseuille flows are shown to be more accurate than those of Couette flow when a time perturbation is considered.     

Existence Result for a Dynamical Equations of Generalized Marguerre-von Kármán Shallow Shells

In a recent work in the static case, Gratie (Appl. Anal. 81:1107–1126, 2002) has generalized the classical Marguerre-von Kármán equations studied by Ciarlet and Paumier in (Comput. Mech. 1:177–202, 1986), where only a portion of the lateral face of the shallow shell is subjected to boundary conditions of von Kármán type, while the remaining portion is subjected to boundary conditions of free edge. Then Ciarlet and Gratie (Math. Mech. Solids 11:83–100, 2006) have established an existence theorem for these equations. In Chacha et al. (Rev. ARIMA 13:63–76, 2010), we extended formally these studies to the dynamical case. More precisely, we considered a three-dimensional dynamical model for a nonlinearly elastic shallow shell with a specific class of boundary conditions of generalized Marguerre-von Kármán type. Using technics from formal asymptotic analysis, we showed that the scaled three-dimensional solution still leads to two-dimensional dynamical boundary value problem called the dynamical equations of generalized Marguerre-von Kármán shallow shells. In this paper, we establish the existence of solutions to these equations using a compactness method of Lions (Quelques Méthodes de Résolution des Problèmes aux Limites non Linéaires, Dunod, Paris, 1969).     

Quasi-linear versus potential-based formulations of force–flux relations and the GENERIC for irreversible processes: comparisons and examples

An essential part in modeling out-of-equilibrium dynamics is the formulation of irreversible dynamics. In the latter, the major task consists in specifying the relations between thermodynamic forces and fluxes. In the literature, mainly two distinct approaches are used for the specification of force–flux relations. On the one hand, quasi-linear relations are employed, which are based on the physics of transport processes and fluctuation–dissipation theorems (de Groot and Mazur in Non-equilibrium thermodynamics, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1962, Lifshitz and Pitaevskii in Physical kinetics. Volume 10, Landau and Lifshitz series on theoretical physics, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1981). On the other hand, force–flux relations are also often represented in potential form with the help of a dissipation potential (?ilhavý in The mechanics and thermodynamics of continuous media, Springer, Berlin, 1997). We address the question of how these two approaches are related. The main result of this presentation states that the class of models formulated by quasi-linear relations is larger than what can be described in a potential-based formulation. While the relation between the two methods is shown in general terms, it is demonstrated also with the help of three examples. The finding that quasi-linear force–flux relations are more general than dissipation-based ones also has ramifications for the general equation for non-equilibrium reversible–irreversible coupling (GENERIC: e.g., Grmela and Öttinger in Phys Rev E 56:6620–6632, 6633–6655, 1997, Öttinger in Beyond equilibrium thermodynamics, Wiley Interscience Publishers, Hoboken, 2005). This framework has been formulated and used in two different forms, namely a quasi-linear (Öttinger and Grmela in Phys Rev E 56:6633–6655, 1997, Öttinger in Beyond equilibrium thermodynamics, Wiley Interscience Publishers, Hoboken, 2005) and a dissipation potential–based (Grmela in Adv Chem Eng 39:75–129, 2010, Grmela in J Non-Newton Fluid Mech 165:980–986, 2010, Mielke in Continuum Mech Therm 23:233–256, 2011) form, respectively, relating the irreversible evolution to the entropy gradient. It is found that also in the case of GENERIC, the quasi-linear representation encompasses a wider class of phenomena as compared to the dissipation-based formulation. Furthermore, it is found that a potential exists for the irreversible part of the GENERIC if and only if one does for the underlying force–flux relations.     

Well-Posedness for the Motion of Physical Vacuum of the Three-dimensional Compressible Euler Equations with or without Self-Gravitation

This paper concerns the well-posedness theory of the motion of a physical vacuum for the compressible Euler equations with or without self-gravitation. First, a general uniqueness theorem of classical solutions is proved for the three dimensional general motion. Second, for the spherically symmetric motions, without imposing the compatibility condition of the first derivative being zero at the center of symmetry, a new local-in-time existence theory is established in a functional space involving less derivatives than those constructed for three-dimensional motions in (Coutand et al., Commun Math Phys 296:559–587, 2010; Coutand and Shkoller, Arch Ration Mech Anal 206:515–616, 2012; Jang and Masmoudi, Well-posedness of compressible Euler equations in a physical vacuum, 2008) by constructing suitable weights and cutoff functions featuring the behavior of solutions near both the center of the symmetry and the moving vacuum boundary.     

Existence,Uniqueness and Lipschitz Dependence for Patlak–Keller–Segel and Navier–Stokes in {\mathbb{R}^2} with Measure-Valued Initial Data

We establish a new local well-posedness result in the space of finite Borel measures for mild solutions of the parabolic–elliptic Patlak–Keller–Segel (PKS) model of chemotactic aggregation in two dimensions. Our result only requires that the initial measure satisfy the necessary assumption \({\max_{x \in \mathbb{R}^2} \mu (\{x\}) < 8 \pi}\) . This work improves the small-data results of Biler (Stud Math 114(2):181–192, 1995) and the existence results of Senba and Suzuki (J Funct Anal 191:17–51, 2002). Our work is based on that of Gallagher and Gallay (Math Ann 332:287–327, 2005), who prove the uniqueness and log-Lipschitz continuity of the solution map for the 2D Navier–Stokes equations (NSE) with measure-valued initial vorticity. We refine their techniques and present an alternative version of their proof which yields existence, uniqueness and Lipschitz continuity of the solution maps of both PKS and NSE. Many steps are more difficult for PKS than for NSE, particularly on the level of the linear estimates related to the self-similar spreading solutions.     

Local Analysis of Solutions of Fractional Semi-Linear Elliptic Equations with Isolated Singularities

In this paper, we study the local behaviors of nonnegative local solutions of fractional order semi-linear equations ${(-\Delta )^\sigma u=u^{\frac{n+2\sigma}{n-2\sigma}}}$ with an isolated singularity, where ${\sigma\in (0,1)}$ . We prove that all the solutions are asymptotically radially symmetric. When σ = 1, these have been proved by Caffarelli et al. (Comm Pure Appl Math 42:271–297, 1989).     

Global Solvability of a Free Boundary Three-Dimensional Incompressible Viscoelastic Fluid System with Surface Tension

Motivated by Beale (Commun Pure Appl Math 34:359–392, 1981; Arch Ration Mech Anal 84:307–352, 1983/1984), we investigate the global well-posedness of a free boundary problem of a three-dimensional incompressible viscoelastic fluid system in an infinite strip and with surface tension on the upper free boundary, provided that the initial data is sufficiently close to the equilibrium state.     

Optimal Regularity and Nondegeneracy of a Free Boundary Problem Related to the Fractional Laplacian

We discuss the optimal regularity and nondegeneracy of a free boundary problem related to the fractional Laplacian. This work is related to, but addresses a different problem from, recent work of Caffarelli et al. (J Eur Math Soc (JEMS) 12(5):1151–1179, 2010). A variant of the boundary Harnack inequality is also proved, where it is no longer required that the function be zero along the boundary.     

Dynamics and Control at Feedback Vertex Sets. I: Informative and Determining Nodes in Regulatory Networks

We consider systems of differential equations which model complex regulatory networks by a graph structure of dependencies. We show that the concepts of informative nodes (Mochizuki and Saito, J Theor Biol 266:323–335, 2010) and determining nodes (Foias and Temam, Math Comput 43:117–133, 1984) coincide with the notion of feedback vertex sets from graph theory. As a result we can determine the long-time dynamics of the entire network from observations on only a feedback vertex set. We also indicate how open loop control at a feedback vertex set, only, forces the remaining network to stably follow prescribed stable or unstable trajectories. We present three examples of biological networks which motivated this work: a specific gene regulatory network of ascidian cell differentiation (Imai et al., Science 312:1183–1187, 2006), a signal transduction network involving the epidermal growth factor in mammalian cells (Oda et al., Mol Syst Biol 1:1–17, 2005), and a mammalian gene regulatory network of circadian rhythms (Mirsky et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106:11107–11112, 2009). In each example the required observation set is much smaller than the entire network. For further details on biological aspects see the companion paper (Mochizuki et al., J Theor Biol, 2013, in press). The mathematical scope of our approach is not limited to biology. Therefore we also include many further examples to illustrate and discuss the broader mathematical aspects.     

On the Energy Dissipation Rate of Solutions to the Compressible Isentropic Euler System

In this paper we extend and complement the results in Chiodaroli et al. (Global ill-posedness of the isentropic system of gas dynamics, 2014) on the well-posedness issue for weak solutions of the compressible isentropic Euler system in 2 space dimensions with pressure law p(ρ) = ρ ^γ , γ ≥ 1. First we show that every Riemann problem whose one-dimensional self-similar solution consists of two shocks admits also infinitely many two-dimensional admissible bounded weak solutions (not containing vacuum) generated by the method of De Lellis and Székelyhidi (Ann Math 170:1417–1436, 2009), (Arch Ration Mech Anal 195:225–260, 2010). Moreover we prove that for some of these Riemann problems and for 1 ≤ γ < 3 such solutions have a greater energy dissipation rate than the self-similar solution emanating from the same Riemann data. We therefore show that the maximal dissipation criterion proposed by Dafermos in (J Diff Equ 14:202–212, 1973) does not favour the classical self-similar solutions.     

Some Indentities for the Gradient of the Principal Invariants, Traces and Determinants via Grassmann Calculus

Let A be a second order tensor in a finite dimensional space. In this work we determine the gradient of the principal invariants of A and obtain some trace and determinant identities using only some standard rigorous statements concerning Grassmann calculus. We recover some of the results of Dui et al. (J. Elast. 75:193–196, 2004) and of Truesdell and Noll (The Non-linear Field Theories of Mechanics, Springer, Berlin, 2002) and solve an old problem proposed in SIAM Review concerning a determinant identity from a new perspective in a concise and simple manner.     

Isentropic Gas Flow for the Compressible Euler Equation in a Nozzle

We study the motion of isentropic gas in a nozzle. Nozzles are used to increase the thrust of engines or to accelerate a flow from subsonic to supersonic. Nozzles are essential parts for jet engines, rocket engines and supersonicwind tunnels. In the present paper, we consider unsteady flow, which is governed by the compressible Euler equation, and prove the existence of global solutions for the Cauchy problem. For this problem, the existence theorem has already been obtained for initial data away from the sonic state, (Liu in Commun Math Phys 68:141–172, 1979). Here, we are interested in the transonic flow, which is essential for engineering and physics. Although the transonic flow has recently been studied (Tsuge in J Math Kyoto Univ 46:457–524, 2006; Lu in Nonlinear Anal Real World Appl 12:2802–2810, 2011), these papers assume monotonicity of the cross section area. Here, we consider the transonic flow in a nozzle with a general cross section area. When we prove global existence, the most difficult point is obtaining a bounded estimate for approximate solutions. To overcome this, we employ a new invariant region that depends on the space variable. Moreover, we introduce a modified Godunov scheme. The corresponding approximate solutions consist of piecewise steady-state solutions of an auxiliary equation, which yield a desired bounded estimate. In order to prove their convergence, we use the compensated compactness framework.     

Wave fronts in second-order elasticity determined by perturbation method applied to the eikonal equation

In Marasco and Romano (Math Comput Model 49(7–8)1504–1518, 2009), Marasco (Math Comput Model 49(7–8):1644–1652, 2009; Int J Eng Sci 47(4):499–511, 2009), we have proposed a perturbation method to determine the speed and the amplitude of the acceleration waves in a second-order elastic body. In this paper, using the above results, we apply a perturbation procedure to analyze the evolution of the wave front of an acceleration wave in the same class of elastic materials. In particular, a second-order approximate solution of the eikonal equation is determined introducing a suitable system of coordinates. The general results are applied to an infinitesimal deformation, and the analytical solution of the eikonal equation is compared with the exact numerical one.     

Zero singularity of codimension two or three in a four-neuron BAM neural network model with multiple delays

In this paper, a four-neuron BAM neural network model with multiple delays is considered. The existence conditions under which that the origin of the system is Bogdanov–Takens (B–T) or triple zero singularity are given. By choosing the connected weights as bifurcation parameters and using the center manifold reduction and the normal form theory and the formula developed by Xu and Huang (J Differ Equ 244:582–598 2008) and Qiao et al. (Chinese Ann Math Ser A 31:59–70 2010), the versal unfoldings and the normal forms for this singularity were given to analyze the behaviors of the system. This paper is a further study of paper Cao and Xiao (IEEE Trans Neural Netw 18:416–430 2007).