50 research outputs found
The prescribed mean curvature equation in weakly regular domains
We show that the characterization of existence and uniqueness up to vertical
translations of solutions to the prescribed mean curvature equation, originally
proved by Giusti in the smooth case, holds true for domains satisfying very
mild regularity assumptions. Our results apply in particular to the
non-parametric solutions of the capillary problem for perfectly wetting fluids
in zero gravity. Among the essential tools used in the proofs, we mention a
\textit{generalized Gauss-Green theorem} based on the construction of the weak
normal trace of a vector field with bounded divergence, in the spirit of
classical results due to Anzellotti, and a \textit{weak Young's law} for
-minimizers of the perimeter.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure --- The results on the weak normal trace of vector
fields have been now extended and moved in a self-contained paper available
at: arXiv:1708.0139
A theory of -dissipative solvers for scalar conservation laws with discontinuous flux
We propose a general framework for the study of contractive semigroups
of solutions to conservation laws with discontinuous flux. Developing the ideas
of a number of preceding works we claim that the whole admissibility issue is
reduced to the selection of a family of "elementary solutions", which are
certain piecewise constant stationary weak solutions. We refer to such a family
as a "germ". It is well known that (CL) admits many different contractive
semigroups, some of which reflects different physical applications. We revisit
a number of the existing admissibility (or entropy) conditions and identify the
germs that underly these conditions. We devote specific attention to the
anishing viscosity" germ, which is a way to express the "-condition" of
Diehl. For any given germ, we formulate "germ-based" admissibility conditions
in the form of a trace condition on the flux discontinuity line (in the
spirit of Vol'pert) and in the form of a family of global entropy inequalities
(following Kruzhkov and Carrillo). We characterize those germs that lead to the
-contraction property for the associated admissible solutions. Our
approach offers a streamlined and unifying perspective on many of the known
entropy conditions, making it possible to recover earlier uniqueness results
under weaker conditions than before, and to provide new results for other less
studied problems. Several strategies for proving the existence of admissible
solutions are discussed, and existence results are given for fluxes satisfying
some additional conditions. These are based on convergence results either for
the vanishing viscosity method (with standard viscosity or with specific
viscosities "adapted" to the choice of a germ), or for specific germ-adapted
finite volume schemes
Particles and fields in fluid turbulence
The understanding of fluid turbulence has considerably progressed in recent
years. The application of the methods of statistical mechanics to the
description of the motion of fluid particles, i.e. to the Lagrangian dynamics,
has led to a new quantitative theory of intermittency in turbulent transport.
The first analytical description of anomalous scaling laws in turbulence has
been obtained. The underlying physical mechanism reveals the role of
statistical integrals of motion in non-equilibrium systems. For turbulent
transport, the statistical conservation laws are hidden in the evolution of
groups of fluid particles and arise from the competition between the expansion
of a group and the change of its geometry. By breaking the scale-invariance
symmetry, the statistically conserved quantities lead to the observed anomalous
scaling of transported fields. Lagrangian methods also shed new light on some
practical issues, such as mixing and turbulent magnetic dynamo.Comment: 165 pages, review article for Rev. Mod. Phy
Fully adaptive multiresolution schemes for strongly degenerate parabolic equations with discontinuous flux
A fully adaptive finite volume multiresolution scheme for one-dimensional
strongly degenerate parabolic equations with discontinuous flux is presented.
The numerical scheme is based on a finite volume discretization using the
Engquist--Osher approximation for the flux and explicit time--stepping. An
adaptivemultiresolution scheme with cell averages is then used to speed up CPU
time and meet memory requirements. A particular feature of our scheme is the
storage of the multiresolution representation of the solution in a dynamic
graded tree, for the sake of data compression and to facilitate navigation.
Applications to traffic flow with driver reaction and a clarifier--thickener
model illustrate the efficiency of this method
A Calculus of Chemical Systems
In recent years various calculi have been proposed for modelling biological systems, typically intracellular pathways. These calculi generally fall into one of two camps: ones based on process calculi, such as Milnerâs pi-calculus [24], and rule-based ones. Examples of the former include [31, 32, 30]; examples of the latter include BIOCHAM, Îș, BioNet
Differential Equations on Graphs
The differential equations encountered in various applications may be treated as
equations on graphs. In the paper it is shown that the structure of the graph allows us to
investigate the properties of the solutions of such equations