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Now showing 1 - 10 of 45
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    Analysis of a time discretization scheme for a nonstandard viscous Cahn-Hilliard system
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2013) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Krejcí, Pavel; Podio-Guidugli, Paola; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper we propose a time discretization of a system of two parabolic equations describing diffusion-driven atom rearrangement in crystalline matter. The equations express the balances of microforces and microenergy; the two phase fields are the order parameter and the chemical potential. The initial and boundary-value problem for the evolutionary system is known to be well posed. Convergence of the discrete scheme to the solution of the continuous problem is proved by a careful development of uniform estimates, by weak compactness and a suitable treatment of nonlinearities. Moreover, for the difference of discrete and continuous solutions we prove an error estimate of order one with respect to the time step.
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    Deep quench approximation and optimal control of general Cahn-Hilliard systems with fractional operators and double obstacle potentials
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2018) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In the recent paper Well-posedness and regularity for a generalized fractional CahnHilliard system, the same authors derived general well-posedness and regularity results for a rather general system of evolutionary operator equations having the structure of a CahnHilliard system. The operators appearing in the system equations were fractional versions in the spectral sense of general linear operators A and B having compact resolvents and are densely defined, unbounded, selfadjoint, and monotone in a Hilbert space of functions defined in a smooth domain. The associated double-well potentials driving the phase separation process modeled by the CahnHilliard system could be of a very general type that includes standard physically meaningful cases such as polynomial, logarithmic, and double obstacle nonlinearities. In the subsequent paper Optimal distributed control of a generalized fractional CahnHilliard system (Appl. Math. Optim. (2018), https://doi.org/10.1007/s00245-018-9540-7) by the same authors, an analysis of distributed optimal control problems was performed for such evolutionary systems, where only the differentiable case of certain polynomial and logarithmic double-well potentials could be admitted. Results concerning existence of optimizers and first-order necessary optimality conditions were derived, where more restrictive conditions on the operators A and B had to be assumed in order to be able to show differentiability properties for the associated control-to-state operator. In the present paper, we complement these results by studying a distributed control problem for such evolutionary systems in the case of nondifferentiable nonlinearities of double obstacle type. For such nonlinearities, it is well known that the standard constraint qualifications cannot be applied to construct appropriate Lagrange multipliers. To overcome this difficulty, we follow here the so-called deep quench method. This technique, in which the nondifferentiable double obstacle nonlinearity is approximated by differentiable logarithmic nonlinearities, was first developed by P. Colli, M.H. Farshbaf-Shaker and J. Sprekels in the paper A deep quench approach to the optimal control of an AllenCahn equation with dynamic boundary conditions and double obstacles (Appl. Math. Optim. 71 (2015), pp. 1-24) and has proved to be a powerful tool in a number of optimal control problems with double obstacle potentials in the framework of systems of CahnHilliard type. We first give a general convergence analysis of the deep quench approximation that includes an error estimate and then demonstrate that its use leads in the double obstacle case to appropriate first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint state system.
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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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    Regularity of the solution to a nonstandard system of phase field equations
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2013) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    A nonstandard systems of differential equations describing two-species phase segregation is considered. This system naturally arises in the asymptotic analysis recently done by Colli, Gilardi, Krej¡cí, and Sprekels as the diffusion coefficient in the equation governing the evolution of the order parameter tends to zero. In particular, a well-posedness result is proved for the limit system. This paper deals with the above limit problem in a less general but still very significant framework and provides a very simple proof of further regularity for the solution. As a byproduct, a simple uniqueness proof is given as well.
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    An asymptotic analysis for a nonstandard Cahn-Hilliard system with viscosity
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2011) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Podio-Guidugli, Paola; Sprekels, Jürgen
    This paper is concerned with a diffusion model of phase-field type, consisting of a parabolic system of two partial differential equations, interpreted as balances of microforces and microenergy, for two unknowns: the problem's order parameter $rho$ and the chemical potential $mu$; each equation includes a viscosity term -- respectively, $varepsilon,partial_tmu$ and $delta,partial_trho$ -- with $varepsilon$ and $delta$ two positive parameters; the field equations are complemented by Neumann homogeneous boundary conditions and suitable initial conditions. In a recent paper [5], we proved that this problem is well-posed and investigated the long-time behavior of its $(varepsilon,delta)-$solutions. Here we discuss the asymptotic limit of the system as $eps$ tends to 0. We prove convergence of $(varepsilon,delta)-$solutions to the corresponding solutions for the case $eps$ =0, whose long-time behavior we characterize; in the proofs, we employ compactness and monotonicity arguments.
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    Well-posedness and regularity for a fractional tumor growth model
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2019) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper, we study a system of three evolutionary operator equations involving fractional powers of selfadjoint, monotone, unbounded, linear operators having compact resolvents. This system constitutes a generalization of a phase field system of Cahn--Hilliard type modelling tumor growth that has been proposed in Hawkins-Daarud et al. (Int. J. Numer. Math. Biomed. Eng. 28 (2012), 3--24) and investigated in recent papers co-authored by the present authors and E. Rocca. The model consists of a Cahn--Hilliard equation for the tumor cell fraction φ, coupled to a reaction-diffusion equation for a function S representing the nutrient-rich extracellular water volume fraction. Effects due to fluid motion are neglected. The generalization investigated in this paper is motivated by the possibility that the diffusional regimes governing the evolution of the different constituents of the model may be of different (e.g., fractional) type. Under rather general assumptions, well-posedness and regularity results are shown. In particular, by writing the equation governing the evolution of the chemical potential in the form of a general variational inequality, also singular or nonsmooth constributions of logarithmic or of double obstacle type to the energy density can be admitted.
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    A distributed control problem for a fractional tumor growth model
    (Basel : MDPI, 2019) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper, we study the distributed optimal control of a system of three evolutionary equations involving fractional powers of three self-adjoint, monotone, unbounded linear operators having compact resolvents. The system is a generalization of a Cahn-Hilliard type phase field system modeling tumor growth that has been proposed by Hawkins-Daarud, van der Zee and Oden. The aim of the control process, which could be realized by either administering a drug or monitoring the nutrition, is to keep the tumor cell fraction under control while avoiding possible harm for the patient. In contrast to previous studies, in which the occurring unbounded operators governing the diffusional regimes were all given by the Laplacian with zero Neumann boundary conditions, the operators may in our case be different; more generally, we consider systems with fractional powers of the type that were studied in a recent work by the present authors. In our analysis, we show the Fréchet differentiability of the associated control-to-state operator, establish the existence of solutions to the associated adjoint system, and derive the first-order necessary conditions of optimality for a cost functional of tracking type. © 2019 by the authors.
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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 for a class of phase-field systems modeling prostate cancer growth with fractional operators and general nonlinearities
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2021) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Sprekels, Jürgen
    This paper deals with a general system of equations and conditions arising from a mathematical model of prostate cancer growth with chemotherapy and antiangiogenic therapy that has been recently introduced and analyzed (see [P. Colli et al., Mathematical analysis and simulation study of a phase-field model of prostate cancer growth with chemotherapy and antiangiogenic therapy effects, Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. bf 30 (2020), 1253--1295]). The related system includes two evolutionary operator equations involving fractional powers of selfadjoint, nonnegative, unbounded linear operators having compact resolvents. Both equations contain nonlinearities and in particular the equation describing the dynamics of the tumor phase variable has the structure of a Allen--Cahn equation with double-well potential and additional nonlinearity depending also on the other variable, which represents the nutrient concentration. The equation for the nutrient concentration is nonlinear as well, with a term coupling both variables. For this system we design an existence, uniqueness and continuous dependence theory by setting up a careful analysis which allows the consideration of nonsmooth potentials and the treatment of continuous nonlinearities with general growth properties.
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    A continuous dependence result for a nonstandard system of phase field equations
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2013) Colli, Pierluigi; Gilardi, Gianni; Krejcí, Pavel; Sprekels, Jürgen
    The present note deals with a nonstandard systems of differential equations describing a two-species phase segregation. This system naturally arises in the asymptotic analysis carried out recently by the same authors, as the diffusion coefficient in the equation governing the evolution of the order parameter tends to zero. In particular, an existence result has been proved for the limit system in a very general framework. On the contrary, uniqueness was shown by assuming a constant mobility coefficient. Here, we generalize this result and prove a continuous dependence property in the case that the mobility coefficient suitably depends on the chemical potential