An energetic material model for time‐dependent ferroelectric behaviour: existence and uniqueness

We discuss rate‐independent engineering models for the multi‐dimensional behaviour of ferroelectric materials. These models capture the non‐linear and hysteretic behaviour of such materials. We show that these models can be formulated in an energetic framework which is based on the elastic and the electric displacements as reversible variables and on interior, irreversible variables like the remanent polarization. We provide quite general conditions on the constitutive laws which guarantee the existence of a solution. Under more restrictive assumptions we are also able to establish uniqueness results. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reduction of quasilinear elliptic equations in cylindrical domains with applications

For certain types of semilinear partial differential equations in a cylindrical domain small bounded solutions are known to lie on a so-called centre manifold of finite dimension. In this paper we prove the result for quasilinear partial differential equations of elliptic and parabolic type. Possible applications include free surface waves and problems in non-linear elasticity. Here we investigate, pars pro toto, the stationary inviscid potential flow in a channel with a free surface and an obstacle at the bottom.     

Geometric topological completions with universal final lifts

In this paper necessary and sufficient conditions are given on a concrete category over a category B so that it can be densely embedded (over B) into a geometric topological category E that admits certain universal final lifts. These conditions, as well as the class of universal final lifts, depend upon an a priori given full subcategory Δ of B. For example, E may have, depending upon Δ and B, universal coproducts or quotients or colimits. For appropriate Δ's, if B is cartesian closed then so is E.     

Γ-limits and relaxations for rate-independent evolutionary problems

This work uses the energetic formulation of rate-independent systems that is based on the stored-energy functionals and the dissipation distance . For sequences and we address the question under which conditions the limits q _∞ of solutions satisfy a suitable limit problem with limit functionals and , which are the corresponding Γ-limits. We derive a sufficient condition, called conditional upper semi-continuity of the stable sets, which is essential to guarantee that q _∞ solves the limit problem. In particular, this condition holds if certain joint recovery sequences exist. Moreover, we show that time-incremental minimization problems can be used to approximate the solutions. A first example involves the numerical approximation of functionals using finite-element spaces. A second example shows that the stop and the play operator converge if the yield sets converge in the sense of Mosco. The third example deals with a problem developing microstructure in the limit k → ∞, which in the limit can be described by an effective macroscopic model. Research partially supported by LC06052 (MŠMT), MSM21620839 (MŠMT), A1077402 (GAČR), by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under MATHEON C18 and under SFB404 C7, by the European Union under HPRN-CT-2002-00284 Smart Systems, and by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. Both, TR and US gratefully acknowledge the kind hospitality of the WIAS, where this research was initiated.