Memory effects in measure transport equations

Transport equations with a nonlocal velocity field have been introduced as a continuum model for interacting particle systems arising in physics, chemistry and biology. Fractional time derivatives, given by convolution integrals of the time-derivative with power-law kernels, are typical for memory effects in complex systems. In this paper we consider a nonlinear transport equation with a fractional time-derivative. We provide a well-posedness theory for weak measure solutions of the problem and an integral formula which generalizes the classical push-forward representation formula to this setting

Differentiability in perturbation parameter of measure solutions to perturbed transport equation

We consider a linear perturbation in the velocity field of the transport equation. We investigate solutions in the space of bounded Radon measures and show that they are differentiable with respect to the perturbation parameter in a proper Banach space, which is predual to the H\"older space $\mathcal{C}^{1+\alpha}(\mathbb{R}^d)$. This result on differentiability is necessary for application in optimal control theory, which we also discuss

Well-posedness of a mathematical model for Alzheimer's disease

We consider the existence and uniqueness of solutions of an initial-boundary value problem for a coupled system of PDE's arising in a model for Alzheimer's disease. Apart from reaction diffusion equations, the system contains a transport equation in a bounded interval for a probability measure which is related to the malfunctioning of neurons. The main ingredients to prove existence are: the method of characteristics for the transport equation, a priori estimates for solutions of the reaction diffusion equations, a variant of the classical contraction theorem, and the Wasserstein metric for the part concerning the probability measure. We stress that all hypotheses on the data are not suggested by mathematical artefacts, but are naturally imposed by modelling considerations. In particular the use of a probability measure is natural from a modelling point of view. The nontrivial part of the analysis is the suitable combination of the various mathematical tools, which is not quite routine and requires various technical adjustments

Bayesian inference of a non-local proliferation model

From a systems biology perspective the majority of cancer models, although interesting and providing a qualitative explanation of some problems, have a major disadvantage in that they usually miss a genuine connection with experimental data. Having this in mind, in this paper, we aim at contributing to the improvement of many cancer models which contain a proliferation term. To this end, we propose a new non-local model of cell proliferation. We select data which are suitable to perform a Bayesian inference for unknown parameters and we provide a discussion on the range of applicability of the model. Furthermore, we provide proof of the stability of a posteriori distributions in total variation norm which exploits the theory of spaces of measures equipped with the weighted flat norm. In a companion paper, we provide a detailed proof of the well-posedness of the problem and we investigate the convergence of the EBT algorithm applied to solve the equation

Upscaling of non-isothermal reactive porous media flow under dominant Péclet number : the effect of changing porosity

Motivated by rock-fluid interactions occurring in a geothermal reservoir, we present a two-dimensional pore scale model of a thin strip consisting of void space and grains, with fluid flow through the void space. Ions in the fluid are allowed to precipitate onto the grains, while minerals in the grains are allowed to dissolve into the fluid, taking into account the possible change in the aperture of the strip that these two processes cause. Temperature variations and possible effects of the temperature in both fluid density and viscosity and in the mineral precipitation and dissolution reactions are included. For the pore scale model equations, we investigate the limit as the width of the strip approaches zero, deriving onedimensional effective equations. We assume that the convection is dominating over diffusion in the system, resulting in Taylor dispersion in the upscaled equations and a Forchheimer-type term in Darcy’s law. Some numerical results where we compare the upscaled model with three simpler versions are presented; two still honoring the changing aperture of the strip but not including Taylor dispersion, and one where the aperture of the strip is fixed but contains dispersive terms

Upscaling of non-isothermal reactive porous media flow under dominant Péclet number : the effect of changing porosity

Motivated by rock-fluid interactions occurring in a geothermal reservoir, we present a two-dimensional pore scale model of a thin strip consisting of void space and grains, with fluid flow through the void space. Ions in the fluid are allowed to precipitate onto the grains, while minerals in the grains are allowed to dissolve into the fluid, taking into account the possible change in the aperture of the strip that these two processes cause. Temperature variations and possible effects of the temperature in both fluid density and viscosity and in the mineral precipitation and dissolution reactions are included. For the pore scale model equations, we investigate the limit as the width of the strip approaches zero, deriving onedimensional effective equations. We assume that the convection is dominating over diffusion in the system, resulting in Taylor dispersion in the upscaled equations and a Forchheimer-type term in Darcy’s law. Some numerical results where we compare the upscaled model with three simpler versions are presented; two still honoring the changing aperture of the strip but not including Taylor dispersion, and one where the aperture of the strip is fixed but contains dispersive terms

Measure-valued mass evolution problems with flux boundary conditions and solution-dependent velocities

In this paper we prove well-posedness for a measure-valued continuity equation with solution-dependent velocity and flux boundary conditions, posed on a bounded one-dimensional domain. We generalize the results of [EHM15a] to settings where the dynamics are driven by interactions. In a forward-Euler-like approach, we construct a time-discretized version of the original problem and employ the results of [EHM15a] as a building block within each subinterval. A limit solution is obtained as the mesh size of the time discretization goes to zero. Moreover, the limit is independent of the specific way of partitioning the time interval [0,T]. This paper is partially based on results presented in [Eve15, Chapter 5], while a number of issues that were still open there, are now resolved. Keywords: Measure-valued equations, nonlinearities, time discretization, flux boundary condition, mild solutions, particle system