New insights on free energies and Saint-Venant’s principle in viscoelasticity

Explicit expressions for the minimum free energy of a linear viscoelastic material and Noll’s definition of state are used here to explore spatial energy decay estimates for viscoelastic bodies, in the full dynamical case and in the quasi-static approximation.In the inertial case, Chirita et al. obtained a certain spatial decay inequality for a space–time integral over a portion of the body and over a finite time interval of the total mechanical energy. This involves the work done on histories, which is not a function of state in general. Here it is shown that for free energies which are functions of state and obey a certain reasonable property, the spatial decay of the corresponding space–time integral is stronger than the one involving the work done on the past history. It turns out that the bound obtained is optimal for the minimal free energy.Two cases are discussed for the quasi-static approximation. The first case deals with general states, so that general histories belonging to the equivalence class of any given state can be considered. The continuity of the stress functional with respect to the norm based on the minimal free energy is proved, and the energy measure based on the minimal free energy turns out to obey the decay inequality derived Chirita et al. for the quasi-static case.The second case explores a crucial point for viscoelastic materials, namely that the response is influenced by the rate of application of loads. Quite surprisingly, the analysis of this phenomenon in the context of Saint-Venant principles has never been carried out explicitly before, even in the linear case. This effect is explored by considering states, the related histories of which are sinusoidal. The spatial decay parameter is shown to be frequency-dependent, i.e. it depends on the rate of load application, and it is proved that of those considered, the most conservative estimate of the frequency-dependent decay is associated with the minimal free energy. A comparison is made of the results for sinusoidal histories at low frequencies and general histories.     

Scattering states of Woods–Saxon interaction in minimal length quantum mechanics

We propose a very simple approach to deal with the problems of the modified Schrödinger equation due to minimal length and thereby solve the minimal length Schrödinger equation in the presence of a non-minimal Woods–Saxon interaction. The transmission and reflection coefficients are reported as well.     

A study on defect formation and magnetic properties of nitrogen-doped ZnO nanowires by the first principles

Theoretical calculation based on density functional theory (DFT) and generalized gradient approximation (GGA) has been carried out in studying defect formation energies, ionizing energies and ferromagnetism of nitrogen-doped ZnO nanowires. The result shows that N_O is deep acceptor, which make it hard to ionize. Ferromagnetic (FM) and antiferromagnetic (AFM) coupling between N atoms are also investigated. The results show that FM coupling between N atoms is more stable than AFM coupling. The FM coupling mechanism is explained by the interaction of N energy level. In addition, zinc and oxygen vacancies affecting FM coupling is also discussed. It is found that zinc and oxygen vacancies are unfavorable for stabilizing FM coupling of nitrogen-doped ZnO nanowires.     

Entropy production and viscosity of a dilute gas

It is known that the viscosity of a dilute gas can be derived by using kinetic theory. We present here a new derivation by using two entropy production principles: the steepest entropy ascent (SEA) principle and the maximum entropy production (MEP) principle. The known result is reproduced in a similar form.     

Lower inequalities of heat semigroups by using parabolic maximum principle

Using parabolic maximum principle, we apply the analytic method to obtain lower comparison inequalities for non-negative weak supersolutions of the heat equation associated with a regular strongly ρ-local Dirichle form on the abstract metric measure space. As an application, we obtain lower estimates for heat kernels on some Riemannian manifolds.     

Adaptive Q–S synchronization between coupled chaotic systems with stochastic perturbation and delay

This work investigates the adaptive Q–S synchronization of coupled chaotic (or hyper-chaotic) systems with stochastic perturbation, delay and unknown parameters. The sufficient conditions for achieving Q–S synchronization of two stochastic chaotic systems are derived based on the invariance principle of stochastic differential equation. By the adaptive control technique, the control laws and the corresponding parameter update laws are proposed such that the stochastic Q–S synchronization of non-identical chaotic (or hyper-chaotic) systems is to be obtained. Finally, two illustrative numerical simulations are also given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

A note on Keller-Osserman conditions on Carnot groups

This paper deals with the study of differential inequalities with gradient terms on Carnot groups. We are mainly focused on inequalities of the form Δ_φu≥f(u)l(|∇₀u|), where f, l and φ are continuous functions satisfying suitable monotonicity assumptions and Δ_φ is the φ-Laplace operator, a natural generalization of the p-Laplace operator which has recently been studied in the context of Carnot groups. We extend to general Carnot groups the results proved in Magliaro et al. (2011) [7] for the Heisenberg group, showing the validity of Liouville-type theorems under a suitable Keller-Osserman condition. In doing so, we also prove a maximum principle for inequality Δ_φu≥f(u)l(|∇₀u|). Finally, we show sharpness of our results for a general φ-Laplacian.     

Existence of traveling waves in compressible Euler equations with viscosity and capillarity

Given any Lax shock of the compressible Euler dynamics equations, we show that there exists the corresponding traveling wave of the system when viscosity and capillarity are suitably added. For a traveling wave corresponding to a given Lax shock, the governing viscous–capillary system is reduced to a system of two differential equations of first-order, which admits an asymptotically stable equilibrium point and a saddle point. We then develop the method of estimating attraction domain of the asymptotically stable equilibrium point for the compressible Euler equations and show that the saddle point in fact lies on the boundary of this set. Then, we establish a saddle-to-stable connection by pointing out that there is a stable trajectory leaving the saddle point and entering the attraction domain of the asymptotically stable equilibrium point. This gives us a traveling wave of the viscous–capillary compressible Euler equations.