Nilpotent and recursive flows

In this paper we introduce a class of nonlinear vector fields on infinite dimensional manifolds such that the corresponding evolution equations can be solved with the same method one uses to solve ordinary differential equations with constant coeficients. Mostly, these equations are nonlinear partial differential equations. It is shown that these flows are characterized by a generalization of the ‘method of variation of constants’ which is widely used for second order problems to find general solutions out of particular ones. Invariant densities are constructed for these flows in a natural way. These invariant densities are providing an essential tool for solving initial value and boundary value problems for the equations under consideration. Many applications are presented     

On the Inviscid Limit Problem of the Vorticity Equations for Viscous Incompressible Flows in the Half‐Plane

We consider the Navier‐Stokes equations for viscous incompressible flows in the half‐plane under the no‐slip boundary condition. By using the vorticity formulation we prove the local‐in‐time convergence of the Navier‐Stokes flows to the Euler flows outside a boundary layer and to the Prandtl flows in the boundary layer in the inviscid limit when the initial vorticity is located away from the boundary. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A new integral representation for quasi-periodic scattering problems in two dimensions

Boundary integral equations are an important class of methods for acoustic and electromagnetic scattering from periodic arrays of obstacles. For piecewise homogeneous materials, they discretize the interface alone and can achieve high order accuracy in complicated geometries. They also satisfy the radiation condition for the scattered field, avoiding the need for artificial boundary conditions on a truncated computational domain. By using the quasi-periodic Green’s function, appropriate boundary conditions are automatically satisfied on the boundary of the unit cell. There are two drawbacks to this approach: (i) the quasi-periodic Green’s function diverges for parameter families known as Wood’s anomalies, even though the scattering problem remains well-posed, and (ii) the lattice sum representation of the quasi-periodic Green’s function converges in a disc, becoming unwieldy when obstacles have high aspect ratio.     

Vanishing viscous limits for the 2D lake equations with Navier boundary conditions

The vanishing viscosity limit is considered for the viscous lake equations with Navier friction boundary conditions. We prove that the inviscid limit satisfies the inviscid lake equations, and the results include flows generated by Lp initial vorticity with 1<p?∞.     

Local well‐posedness for volume‐preserving mean curvature and Willmore flows with line tension

We show the short‐time existence and uniqueness of solutions for the motion of an evolving hypersurface in contact with a solid container driven by the volume‐preserving mean curvature flow (MCF) taking line tension effects on the boundary into account. Difficulties arise due to dynamic boundary conditions and due to the contact angle and the non‐local nature of the resulting second order, nonlinear PDE. In addition, we prove the same result for the Willmore flow with line tension, which results in a nonlinear PDE of fourth order. For both flows we will use a curvilinear cordinate system due to Vogel to write the flows as graphs over a fixed reference hypersurface.     

Low-Reynolds boundary driven cavity flows in a thin liquid shell

Low-Reynolds recirculating cavity flows are traditionally generated from lid-driven boundary motion at a solid-fluid interface or result from shear flow over an opening. Such flows are typically described by the equations of creeping motion, where viscous forces are dominant. We illustrate using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) an original family of boundary-driven cavity flows occurring, in contrast to classic configurations, at a liquid-gas interface: thermally-induced Marangoni flows in a thin liquid shell generate forced, steady-state recirculating flows inside the cavity. Forcing relies on viscous mechanisms at the boundary but resulting flow patterns are, however, inviscid. Here, the inviscid equations of fluid motion are not used as an approximation, but rather come as a result from the solution of the creeping motion equations in the region inside the sphere. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A note on the contact angle boundary condition for Monge-Ampère equations

We give a simple proof of a result of Xinan Ma concerning a necessary condition for the solvability of the two-dimensional Monge-Ampère equation subject to the contact angle or capillarity boundary condition. Our technique works for more general Monge-Ampère equations in any dimension, and also extends to some other boundary conditions.

     

Convergence of euler-stokes splitting of the navier-stokes equations

We consider approximation by partial time steps of a smooth solution of the Navier-Stokes equations in a smooth domain in two or three space dimensions with no-slip boundary condition. For small k > 0, we alternate the solution for time k of the inviscid Euler equations, with tangential boundary condition, and the solution of the linear Stokes equations for time k, with the no-slip condition imposed. We show that this approximation remains bounded in H^2,p and is accurate to order k in L^p for p > ∞. The principal difficulty is that the initial state for each Stokes step has tangential velocity at the boundary generated during the Euler step, and thus does not satisfy the boundary condition for the Stokes step. The validity of such a fractional step method or splitting is an underlying principle for some computational methods. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Hamiltonian systems as selfdual equations

Hamiltonian systems with various time boundary conditions are formulated as absolute minima of newly devised non-negative action functionals obtained by a generalization of Bogomolnyi’s trick of ‘dcompleting squares’. Reminiscent of the selfdual Yang-Mills equations, they are not derived from the fact that they are critical points (i.e., from the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations) but from being zeroes of the corresponding non-negative Lagrangians. A general method for resolving such variational problems is also described and applied to the construction of periodic solutions for Hamiltonian systems, but also to study certain Lagrangian intersections.      

Efficient representations of Green’s functions for some elliptic equations with piecewise-constant coefficients

Convenient for immediate computer implementation equivalents of Green’s functions are obtained for boundary-contact value problems posed for two-dimensional Laplace and Klein-Gordon equations on some regions filled in with piecewise homogeneous isotropic conductive materials. Dirichlet, Neumann and Robin conditions are allowed on the outer boundary of a simply-connected region, while conditions of ideal contact are assumed on interface lines. The objective in this study is to widen the range of effective applicability for the Green’s function version of the boundary integral equation method making the latter usable for equations with piecewise-constant coefficients.     

Examples of boundary layers associated with the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations

The author surveys a few examples of boundary layers for which the Prandtl boundary layer theory can be rigorously validated. All of them are associated with the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for Newtonian fluids equipped with various Dirichlet boundary conditions (specified velocity). These examples include a family of (nonlinear 3D) plane parallel flows, a family of (nonlinear) parallel pipe flows, as well as flows with uniform injection and suction at the boundary. We also identify a key ingredient in establishing the validity of the Prandtl type theory, i.e., a spectral constraint on the approximate solution to the Navier-Stokes system constructed by combining the inviscid solution and the solution to the Prandtl type system. This is an additional difficulty besides the wellknown issue related to the well-posedness of the Prandtl type system. It seems that the main obstruction to the verification of the spectral constraint condition is the possible separation of boundary layers. A common theme of these examples is the inhibition of separation of boundary layers either via suppressing the velocity normal to the boundary or by injection and suction at the boundary so that the spectral constraint can be verified. A meta theorem is then presented which covers all the cases considered here.     

A trapping principle and convergence result for finite element approximate solutions of steady reaction/diffusion systems

We consider nonlinear elliptic systems, with mixed boundary conditions, on a convex polyhedral domain Ω ⊂ R ^N . These are nonlinear divergence form generalizations of Δu = f(·, u), where f is outward pointing on the trapping region boundary. The motivation is that of applications to steady-state reaction/diffusion systems. Also included are reaction/diffusion/convection systems which satisfy the Einstein relations, for which the Cole-Hopf transformation is possible. For maximum generality, the theory is not tied to any specific application. We are able to demonstrate a trapping principle for the piecewise linear Galerkin approximation, defined via a lumped integration hypothesis on integrals involving f, by use of variational inequalities. Results of this type have previously been obtained for parabolic systems by Estep, Larson, and Williams, and for nonlinear elliptic equations by Karátson and Korotov. Recent minimum and maximum principles have been obtained by Jüngel and Unterreiter for nonlinear elliptic equations. We make use of special properties of the element stiffness matrices, induced by a geometric constraint upon the simplicial decomposition. This constraint is known as the non-obtuseness condition. It states that the inward normals, associated with an arbitrary pair of an element’s faces, determine an angle with nonpositive cosine. Drăgănescu, Dupont, and Scott have constructed an example for which the discrete maximum principle fails if this condition is omitted. We also assume vertex communication in each element in the form of an irreducibility hypothesis on the off-diagonal elements of the stiffness matrix. There is a companion convergence result, which yields an existence theorem for the solution. This entails a consistency hypothesis for interpolation on the boundary, and depends on the Tabata construction of simple function approximation, based on barycentric regions. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant DMS-0311263.     

Convergence analysis of a conforming adaptive finite element method for an obstacle problem

The adaptive algorithm for the obstacle problem presented in this paper relies on the jump residual contributions of a standard explicit residual-based a posteriori error estimator. Each cycle of the adaptive loop consists of the steps ‘SOLVE’, ‘ESTIMATE’, ‘MARK’, and ‘REFINE’. The techniques from the unrestricted variational problem are modified for the convergence analysis to overcome the lack of Galerkin orthogonality. We establish R-linear convergence of the part of the energy above its minimal value, if there is appropriate control of the data oscillations. Surprisingly, the adaptive mesh-refinement algorithm is the same as in the unconstrained case of a linear PDE—in fact, there is no modification near the discrete free boundary necessary for R-linear convergence. The arguments are presented for a model obstacle problem with an affine obstacle χ and homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. The proof of the discrete local efficiency is more involved than in the unconstrained case. Numerical results are given to illustrate the performance of the error estimator.     

Derivation of Prandtl boundary layer equations for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in a curved domain

The proposal of this note is to derive the equations of boundary layers in the small viscosity limit for the two-dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes equations defined in a curved bounded domain with the non-slip boundary condition. By using curvilinear coordinate system in a neighborhood of boundary, and the multi-scale analysis we deduce that the leading profiles of boundary layers of the incompressible flows in a bounded domain still satisfy the classical Prandtl equations when the viscosity goes to zero, which are the same as for the flows defined in the half space.     

Test of symmetry of a one-dimensional distribution against positive biasedness

Summary Definitions of different strengths are given to the notion of ‘a positively biased random variable’. This notion is related to that of ‘a stochastically larger component of a two-dimensional random vector’, which was introduced previously by the authors. Properties of common rank tests of symmetry about zero against our specification of alternatives are studied in detail. The positive biasedness is extended to ‘positively more biased’. Test of symmetry of a two-dimensional random vector is also referred to.     

S-convexity revisited (fuzzy): long version

In this revisional article, we criticize (strongly) the use made by Medar et al., and those whose work they base themselves on, of the name ‘convexity’ in definitions which intend to relate to convex functions, or cones, or sets, but actually seem to be incompatible with the most basic consequences of having the name ‘convexity’ associated to them. We then believe to have fixed the ‘denominations’ associated with Medar’s (et al.) work, up to a point of having it all matching the existing literature in the field [which precedes their work (by long)]. We also expand his work scope by introducing s ₁-convexity concepts to his group of definitions, which encompasses only convex and its proper extension, s ₂-convex, so far. This article is a long version of our previous review of Medar’s work, published by FJMS (Pinheiro, M.R.: S-convexity revisited. FJMS, 26/3, 2007).     

On vortex perturbations in a free-interacting boundary layer

Large-scale structures with an inviscid, non-linear subdomain (deck) on the bottom of a boundary layer in the case of subsonic and transonic free stream velocities are considered. A class of locally inviscid perturbations with an internal line of discontinuity of the tangential velocity, which leads to the appearance of a free term on the right-hand side of the Benjamin-Ono equations, is investigated. The shape of the above-mentioned line is sought and it is determined from the solution of a system of one-dimensional non-stationary equations in which, apart from the Benjamin-Ono equation, a kinematic condition and an equation for the inviscid deck close to the wall also occur. An example of a periodic, non-linear solution is constructed and amplitude constraints which ensure its realization are formulated.     

Solutions to the mixed problem of viscous incompressible flows in a channel

We study regularity of viscous incompressible fluid flows in a 2D channel with “do nothing” outflow boundary condition on the output for the steady Stokes and Navier–Stokes equations.     

Ellipticity on Manifolds With Edges and Boundary

Ellipticity of a manifold with edges and boundary is connected to boundary and edge conditions that complete corresponding operators to Fredholm operators between weighted Sobolev spaces. We study a new parameter-dependent calculus of elliptic operators, where the interior symbols have specific properties on the boundary. We construct elliptic operators with a prescribed number of edge conditions and obtain isomorphisms in the scale of edge Sobolev spaces. Supported by the Chinese-German Cooperation Program ‘Partial Differential Equations’, NSFC of China and DFG of Germany.