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Now showing 1 - 10 of 37
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    On an application of Tikhonovs fixed point theorem to a nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard type system modeling phase separation
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2015) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    This paper investigates a nonlocal version of a model for phase separation on an atomic lattice that was introduced by P. Podio-Guidugli in Ric. Mat. 55 (2006) 105-118. The model consists of an initial-boundary value problem for a nonlinearly coupled system of two partial differential equations governing the evolution of an order parameter p and the chemical potential my. Singular contributions to the local free energy in the form of logarithmic or ouble-obstacle potentials are admitted. In contrast to the local model, which was studied by P. Podio-Guidugli and the present authors in a series of recent publications, in the nonlocal case the equation governing the evolution of the order parameter contains in place of the Laplacian a nonlocal expression that originates from nonlocal contributions to the free energy and accounts for possible long-range interactions between the atoms. It is shown that just as in the local case the model equations are well posed, where the technique of proving existence is entirely different: it is based on an application of Tikhonovs fixed point theorem in a rather unusual separable and reflexive Banach space.
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    Optimal velocity control of a convective Cahn-Hilliard system with double obstacles and dynamic boundary conditions: A deep quench approach
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2017) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper, we investigate a distributed optimal control problem for a convective viscous CahnHilliard system with dynamic boundary conditions. Such systems govern phase separation processes between two phases taking place in an incompressible fluid in a container and, at the same time, on the container boundary. The cost functional is of standard tracking type, while the control is exerted by the velocity of the fluid in the bulk. In this way, the coupling between the state (given by the associated order parameter and chemical potential) and control variables in the governing system of nonlinear partial differential equations is bilinear, which presents a difficulty for the analysis. In contrast to the previous paper Optimal velocity control of a viscous CahnHilliard system with convection and dynamic boundary conditions by the same authors, the bulk and surface free energies are of double obstacle type, which renders the state constraint nondifferentiable. It is well known that for such cases standard constraint qualifications are not satisfied so that standard methods do not apply to yield the existence of Lagrange multipliers. In this paper, we overcome this difficulty by taking advantage of results established in the quoted paper for logarithmic nonlinearities, using a so-called deep quench approximation. We derive results concerning the existence of optimal controls and the first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint system.
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    On the Cahn-Hilliard equation with dynamic boundary conditions and a dominating boundary potential
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2014) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    The Cahn-Hilliard and viscous Cahn-Hilliard equations with singular and possibly nonsmooth potentials and dynamic boundary condition are considered and some well-posedness and regularity results are proved.
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    Well-posedness and long-time behavior for a nonstandard viscous Cahn-Hilliard system
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2011) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Geanni; Podio-Guidugli, Paolo; Sprekels, Jürgen
    We study a diffusion model of phase field type, consisting of a system of two partial differential equations encoding the balances of microforces and microenergy; the two unknowns are the order parameter and the chemical potential. By a careful development of uniform estimates and the deduction of certain useful boundedness properties, we prove existence and uniqueness of a global-in-time smooth solution to the associated initial/boundary-value problem; moreover, we give a description of the relative $omega$-limit set.
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    Optimal velocity control of a viscous Cahn-Hilliard system with convection and dynamic boundary conditions
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2017) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper, we investigate a distributed optimal control problem for a convective viscous CahnHilliard system with dynamic boundary conditions. Such systems govern phase separation processes between two phases taking place in an incompressible fluid in a container and, at the same time, on the container boundary. The cost functional is of standard tracking type, while the control is exerted by the velocity of the fluid in the bulk. In this way, the coupling between the state (given by the associated order parameter and chemical potential) and control variables in the governing system of nonlinear partial differential equations is bilinear, which presents an additional difficulty for the analysis. The nonlinearities in the bulk and surface free energies are of logarithmic type, which entails that the thermodynamic forces driving the phase separation process may become singular. We show existence for the optimal control problem under investigation, prove the Fréchet differentiability of the associated control-to-state mapping in suitable Banach spaces, and derive the first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint system. Due to the strong nonlinear couplings between state variables and control, the corresponding proofs require a considerable analytical effort.
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    On the longtime behavior of a viscous Cahn-Hilliard system with convection and dynamic boundary conditions
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2018) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper, we study the longtime asymptotic behavior of a phase separation process occurring in a three-dimensional domain containing a fluid flow of given velocity. This process is modeled by a viscous convective CahnHilliard system, which consists of two nonlinearly coupled second-order partial differential equations for the unknown quantities, the chemical potential and an order parameter representing the scaled density of one of the phases. In contrast to other contributions, in which zero Neumann boundary conditions were are assumed for both the chemical potential and the order parameter, we consider the case of dynamic boundary conditions, which model the situation when another phase transition takes place on the boundary. The phase transition processes in the bulk and on the boundary are driven by free energies functionals that may be nondifferentiable and have derivatives only in the sense of (possibly set-valued) subdifferentials. For the resulting initial-boundary value system of CahnHilliard type, general well-posedness results have been established in a recent contribution by the same authors. In the present paper, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the solutions as times approaches infinity. More precisely, we study the w-limit (in a suitable topology) of every solution trajectory. Under the assumptions that the viscosity coefficients are strictly positive and that at least one of the underlying free energies is differentiable, we prove that the w-limit is meaningful and that all of its elements are solutions to the corresponding stationary system, where the component representing the chemical potential is a constant.
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    A boundary control problem for the pure Cahn-Hilliard equation with dynamic boundary conditions
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2015) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    A boundary control problem for the pure Cahn-Hilliard equations with possibly singular potentials and dynamic boundary conditions is studied and first-order necessary conditions for optimality are proved.
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    On a Cahn-Hilliard system with convection and dynamic boundary conditions
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2017) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    This paper deals with an initial and boundary value problem for a system coupling equation and boundary condition both of CahnHilliard type; an additional convective term with a forced velocity field, which could act as a control on the system, is also present in the equation. Either regular or singular potentials are admitted in the bulk and on the boundary. Both the viscous and pure CahnHilliard cases are investigated, and a number of results is proven about existence of solutions, uniqueness, regularity, continuous dependence, uniform boundedness of solutions, strict separation property. A complete approximation of the problem, based on the regularization of maximal monotone graphs and the use of a FaedoGalerkin scheme, is introduced and rigorously discussed.
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    A boundary control problem for the viscous Cahn-Hilliard equation with dynamic boundary conditions
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2014) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    A boundary control problem for the viscous Cahn-Hilliard equations with possibly singular potentials and dynamic boundary conditions is studied and first order necessary conditions for optimality are proved.
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    Well-posedness and regularity for a generalized fractional Cahn-Hilliard system
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2018) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper, we investigate a rather general system of two operator equations that has the structure of a viscous or nonviscous Cahn–Hilliard system in which nonlinearities of double-well type occur. Standard cases like regular or logarithmic potentials, as well as non-differentiable potentials involving indicator functions, are admitted. The operators appearing in the system equations are fractional versions of general linear operators A and B, where the latter are densely defined, unbounded, self-adjoint and monotone in a Hilbert space of functions defined in a smooth domain and have compact resolvents. In this connection, we remark the fact that our definition of the fractional power of operators uses the approach via spectral theory. Typical cases are given by standard second-order elliptic differential operators (e.g., the Laplacian) with zero Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions, but also other cases like fourth-order systems or systems involving the Stokes operator are covered by the theory. We derive in this paper general wellposedness and regularity results that extend corresponding results which are known for either the non-fractional Laplacian with zero Neumann boundary condition or the fractional Laplacian with zero Dirichlet condition. These results are entirely new if at least one of the operators A and B differs from the Laplacian. It turns out that the first eigenvalue 1 of A plays an important und not entirely obvious role: if 1 is positive, then the operators A and B may be completely unrelated; if, however, 1 equals zero, then it must be simple and the corresponding one-dimensional eigenspace has to consist of the constant functions and to be a subset of the domain of definition of a certain fractional power of B. We are able to show general existence, uniqueness, and regularity results for both these cases, as well as for both the viscous and the nonviscous system.