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Now showing 1 - 10 of 28
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    A class of minimum principles for characterizing the trajectories and the relaxation of dissipative systems
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2006) Mielke, Alexander; Ortiz, Michael
    This work is concerned with the reformulation of evolutionary problems in a weak form enabling consideration of solutions that may exhibit evolving microstructures. This reformulation is accomplished by expressing the evolutionary problem in variational form, i.e., by identifying a functional whose minimizers represent entire trajectories of the system. The particular class of functionals under consideration is derived by first defining a sequence of time-discretized minimum problems and subsequently formally passing to the limit of continuous time. The resulting functionals may be regarded as elliptic regularizations of the original evolutionary problem. We find that the $Gamma$-limits of interest are highly degenerate and provide limited information regarding the limiting trajectories of the system. Instead we seek to characterize the minimizing trajectories directly. The special class of problems characterized by a rate-independent dissipation functional is amenable to a particularly illuminating analysis. For these systems it is possible to derive a priori bounds that are independent of the regularizing parameter, whence it is possible to extract convergent subsequences and find the limiting trajectories. Under general assumptions on the functionals, we show that all such limits satisfy the energetic formulation (S) & (E) for rate-independent systems. Moreover, we show that the accumulation points of the regularized solutions solve the associated limiting energetic formulation.
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    Existence results for a contact problem with varying friction coefficient and nonlinear forces
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2006) Schmid, Florian; Mielke, Alexander
    We consider the rate-independent problem of a particle moving in a three - dimensional half space subject to a time-dependent nonlinear restoring force having a convex potential and to Coulomb friction along the flat boundary of the half space, where the friction coefficient may vary along the boundary. Our existence result allows for solutions that may switch arbitrarily often between unconstrained motion in the interior and contact where the solutions may switch between sticking and frictional sliding. However, our existence result is local and guarantees continuous solutions only as long as the convexity of the potential is strong enough to compensate the variation of the friction coefficient times the contact pressure. By simple examples we show that our sufficient conditions are also necessary. Our method is based on the energetic formulation of rate-independent systems as developed by Mielke and co-workers. We generalize the time-incremental minimization procedure of Mielke and Rossi for the present situation of a non-associative flow rule.
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    Energy release rate for cracks in finite-strain elasticity
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2006) Knees, Dorothee; Mielke, Alexander
    Griffith's fracture criterion describes in a quasistatic setting whether or not a pre-existing crack in an elastic body is stationary for given external forces. In terms of the energy release rate (ERR), which is the derivative of the deformation energy of the body with respect to a virtual crack extension, this criterion reads: If the ERR is less than a specific constant, then the crack is stationary, otherwise it will grow. In this paper, we consider geometrically nonlinear elastic models with polyconvex energy densities and prove that the ERR is well defined. Moreover, without making any assumption on the smoothness of minimizers, we derive rigorously the well-known Griffith formula and the $J$-integral, from which the ERR can be calculated. The proofs are based on a weak convergence result for Eshelby tensors.
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    Global existence for rate-independent gradient plasticity at finite strain
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2008) Mainik, Andreas; Mielke, Alexander
    We provide a global existence result for the time-continuous elastoplasticity problem using the energetic formulation. For this we show that the geometric nonlinearities via the multiplicative decomposition of the strain can be controlled via polyconvexity and a priori stress bounds in terms of the energy density. While temporal oscillations are controlled via the energy dissipation the spatial compactness is obtain via the regularizing terms involving gradients of the internal variables.
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    Multi-pulse evolution and space-time chaos in dissipative systems
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2006) Zelik, Sergey; Mielke, Alexander
    We study semilinear parabolic systems on the full space Rn that admit a family of exponentially decaying pulse-like steady states obtained via translations. The multi-pulse solutions under consideration look like the sum of infinitely many such pulses which are well separated. We prove a global center-manifold reduction theorem for the temporal evolution of such multi-pulse solutions and show that the dynamics of these solutions can be described by an infinite systems of ODEs for the positions of the pulses. As an application of the developed theory, we verify the existence of Sinai-Bunimovich space-time chaos in 1D space-time periodically forced Swift-Hohenberg equation.
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    Continuum descriptions for the dynamics in discrete lattices : derivation and justification
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2006) Giannoulis, Johannes; Herrmann, Michael; Mielke, Alexander
    The passage from microscopic systems to macroscopic ones is studied by starting from spatially discrete lattice systems and deriving several continuum limits. The lattice system is an infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian system displaying a variety of different dynamical behavior. Depending on the initial conditions one sees quite different behavior like macroscopic elastic deformations associated with acoustic waves or like propagation of optical pulses. We show how on a formal level different macroscopic systems can be derived such as the Korteweg-de Vries equation, the nonlinear Schroedinger equation, Whitham's modulation equation, the three-wave interaction model, or the energy transport equation using the Wigner measure. We also address the question how the microscopic Hamiltonian and the Lagrangian structures transfer to similar structures on the macroscopic level. Finally we discuss rigorous analytical convergence results of the microscopic system to the macroscopic one by either weak-convergence methods or by quantitative error bounds.
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    A metric approach to a class fo doubly nonlinear evolution euations and applications
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2007) Rossi, Riccarda; Mielke, Alexander; Savaré, Giuseppe
    This paper deals with the analysis of a class of doubly nonlinear evolution equations in the framework of a general metric space. We propose for such equations a suitable metric formulation (which in fact extends the notion of Curve of Maximal Slope for gradient flows in metric spaces, see [5]), and prove the existence of solutions for the related Cauchy problem by means of an approximation scheme by time discretization. Then, we apply our results to obtain the existence of solutions to abstract doubly nonlinear equations in reflexive Banach spaces. The metric approach is also exploited to analyze a class of evolution equations in $L^1$ spaces.
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    Weak-convergence methods for Hamiltonian multiscale problems
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2007) Mielke, Alexander
    We consider Hamiltonian problems depending on a small parameter like in wave equations with rapidly oscillating coefficients or the embedding of an infinite atomic chain into a continuum by letting the atomic distance tend to $0$. For general semilinear Hamiltonian systems we provide abstract convergence results in terms of the existence of a family of joint recovery operators which guarantee that the effective equation is obtained by taking the $Gamma$-limit of the Hamiltonian. The convergence is in the weak sense with respect to the energy norm. Exploiting the well-developed theory of $Gamma$-convergence, we are able to generalize the admissible coefficients for homogenization in the wave equations. Moreover, we treat the passage from a discrete oscillator chain to a wave equation with general $rmL^infty$ coefficients
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    Reverse approximation of energetic solutions to rate-independent processes
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2007) Mielke, Alexander; Rindler, Filip
    Energetic solutions to rate-independent processes are usually constructed via time-incremental minimization problems. In this work we show that all energetic solutions can be approximated by incremental problems if we allow approximate minimizers, where the error in minimization has to be of the order of the time step. Moreover, we study sequences of problems where the energy functionals have a Gamma limit.
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    Numerical approaches to rate-independent processes and applicaitons in inelasticity
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2006) Mielke, Alexander; Roubíček, Tomaš
    A general abstract approximation scheme for rate-independent processes in the energetic formulation is proposed and its convergence is proved under various rather mild data qualifications. The abstract theory is illustrated on several examples: plasticity with isotropic hardening, damage, debonding, magnetostriction, and two models of martensitic transformation in shape-memory alloys.