2007, Fasano, Antonio, Hömberg, Dietmar, Panizzi, Lucia

A mathematical model for the gas carburizing of steel is presented. Carbon is dissolved in the surface layer of a low-carbon steel part at a temperature sufficient to render the steel austenitic, followed by quenching to form a martensitic microstructure. The model consists of a nonlinear evolution equation for the temperature, coupled with a nonlinear evolution equation for the carbon concentration, both coupled with two ordinary differential equations to describe the phase fractions. We prove existence and uniqueness of a solution and finally present some numerical simulations.

2008, Krejčí, Pavel, Panizzi, Lucia

Inspired by a problem in steel metallurgy, we prove the existence, regularity, uniqueness, and continuous data dependence of solutions to a coupled parabolic system in a smooth bounded 3D domain, with nonlinear and nonhomogeneous boundary conditions. The nonlinear coupling takes place in the diffusion coefficient. The proofs are based on anisotropic estimates in tangential and normal directions, and on a refined variant of the Gronwall lemma.