2014, Frigeri, Sergio Pietro, Rocca, Elisabetta, Sprekels, Jürgen

We study a diffuse interface model for incompressible isothermal mixtures of two immiscible fluids coupling the Navier-Stokes system with a convective nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation in two dimensions of space. We apply recently proved well-posedness and regularity results in order to establish existence of optimal controls as well as first-order necessary optimality conditions for an associated optimal control problem in which a distributed control is applied to the fluid flow.

2015, Colli, Pierluigi, Gilardi, Gianni, Rocca, Elisabetta, Sprekels, Jürgen

This paper is concerned with a phase field system of Cahn-Hilliard type that is related to a tumor growth model and consists of three equations in gianni terms of the variables order parameter, chemical potential and nutrient concentration. This system has been investigated in the recent papers citeCGH and citeCGRS gianni from the viewpoint of well-posedness, long time bhv and asymptotic convergence as two positive viscosity coefficients tend to zero at the same time. Here, we continue the analysis performed in citeCGRS by showing two independent sets of results as just one of the coefficents tends to zero, the other remaining fixed. We prove convergence results, uniqueness of solutions to the two resulting limit problems, and suitable error estimates

2018, Carraturo, Massimo, Rocca, Elisabetta, Bonetti, Elena, Hömberg, Dietmar, Reali, Alessandro, Auricchio, Ferdinando

In the present work we introduce a novel graded-material design for additive manufacturing based on phase-field and topology optimization. The main novelty of this work comes from the introduction of an additional phase-field variable in the classical single-material phase-field topology optimization algorithm. This new variable is used to grade the material properties in a continuous fashion. Two different numerical examples are discussed, in both of them we perform sensitivity studies to asses the effects of different model parameters onto the resulting structure. From the presented results we can observe that the proposed algorithm adds additional freedom in the design, exploiting the higher flexibility coming from additive manufacturing technology.

2013, Feireisl, Eduard, Rocca, Elisabetta, Schimperna, Giulio, Zarnescu, Arghir

In this paper we prove the existence of global in time weak solutions for an evolutionary PDE system modelling nonisothermal Landau-de Gennes nematic liquid crystal (LC) flows in three dimensions of space. In our model, the incompressible Navier-Stokes system for the macroscopic velocity u is coupled to a nonlinear convective parabolic equation describing the evolution of the Q-tensor Q, namely a tensor-valued variable representing the normalized second order moments of the probability distribution function of the LC molecules. The effects of the (absolute) temperature theta are prescribed in the form of an energy balance identity complemented with a global entropy production inequality. Compared to previous contributions, we can consider here the physically realistic singular configuration potential f introduced by Ball and Majumdar. This potential gives rise to severe mathematical difficulties since it introduces, in the Q-tensor equation, a term which is at the same time singular in Q and degenerate in theta. To treat it a careful analysis of the properties of f, particularly of its blow-up rate, is carried out.

2016, Colli, Pierluigi, Gilardi, Gianni, Rocca, Elisabetta, Sprekels, Jürgen

In this paper, a distributed optimal control problem is studied for a diffuse interface model of tumor growth which was proposed by HawkinsDaruud et al. in [25]. The model consists of a CahnHilliard equation for the tumor cell fraction 'coupled to a reaction-diffusion equation for a function phi representing the nutrientrich extracellular water volume fraction. The distributed control u monitors as a right-hand side the equation for sigma and can be interpreted as a nutrient supply or a medication, while the cost function, which is of standard tracking type, is meant to keep the tumor cell fraction under control during the evolution. We show that the control-to-state operator is Fréchet differentiable between appropriate Banach spaces and derive the first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality involving the adjoint state variables.

2015, Dai, Mimi, Feireisl, Eduard, Rocca, Elisabetta, Schimperna, Giulio

We consider a diffuse interface model for tumor growth recently proposed in [3]. In this new approach sharp interfaces are replaced by narrow transition layers arising due to adhesive forces among the cell species. Hence, a continuum thermodynamically consistent model is introduced. The resulting PDE system couples four different types of equations: a Cahn-Hilliard type equation for the tumor cells (which include proliferating and dead cells), a Darcy law for the tissue velocity field, whose divergence may be different from 0 and depend on the other variables, a transport equation for the proliferating (viable) tumor cells, and a quasi-static reaction diffusion equation for the nutrient concentration. We establish existence of weak solutions for the PDE system coupled with suitable initial and boundary conditions. In particular, the proliferation function at the boundary is supposed to be nonnegative on the set where the velocity u satisfies u ypsilon 0, where ypsilon is the outer normal to the boundary of the domain. We also study a singular limit as the diffuse interface coefficient tends to zero.

2015, Bonetti, Elena, Rocca, Elisabetta, Schimperna, Giulio, Scala, Riccardo

A weak formulation for the so-called semilinear strongly damped wave equation with constraint is introduced and a corresponding notion of solution is defined. The main idea in this approach consists in the use of duality techniques in Sobolev-Bochner spaces, aimed at providing a suitable "relaxation" of the constraint term. A global in time existence result is proved under the natural condition that the initial data have finite "physical" energy.

2014, Rocca, Elisabetta, Rossi, Riccarda

In this paper we analyze a PDE system modelling (non-isothermal) phase transitions and damage phenomena in thermoviscoelastic materials. The model is thermodynamically consistent: in particular, no small perturbation assumption is adopted, which results in the presence of quadratic terms on the right-hand side of the temperature equation, only estimated in L1. The whole system has a highly nonlinear character. We address the existence of a weak notion of solution, referred to as entropic, where the temperature equation is formulated with the aid of an entropy inequality, and of a total energy inequality. This solvability concept reflects the basic principles of thermomechanics as well as the thermodynamical consistency of the model. It allows us to obtain global-in-time existence theorems without imposing any restriction on the size of the initial data. We prove our results by passing to the limit in a time discretization scheme, carefully tailored to the nonlinear features of the PDE system (with its entropic formulation), and of the a priori estimates performed on it. Our time-discrete analysis could be useful towards the numerical study of this model.

2015, Colli, Pierluigi, Gilardi, Gianni, Rocca, Elisabetta, Sprekels, Jürgen

In this paper we perform an asymptotic analysis for two different vanishing viscosity coefficients occurring in a phase field system of Cahn--Hilliard type that was recently introduced in order to approximate a tumor growth model. In particular, we extend some recent results obtained in [Colli-Gilardi-Hilhorst 2015], letting the two positive viscosity parameters tend to zero independently from each other and weakening the conditions on the initial data in such a way as to maintain the nonlinearities of the PDE system as general as possible. Finally, under proper growth conditions on the interaction potential, we prove an error estimate leading also to the uniqueness result for the limit system.

2014, Frigeri, Sergio, Grasselli, Maurizio, Rocca, Elisabetta

We consider a diffuse interface model for incompressible isothermal mixtures of two immiscible fluids with matched constant densities. This model consists of the Navier-Stokes system coupled with a convective nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation with non-constant mobility. We first prove the existence of a global weak solution in the case of non-degenerate mobilities and regular potentials of polynomial growth. Then we extend the result to degenerate mobilities and singular (e.g. logarithmic) potentials. In the latter case we also establish the existence of the global attractor in dimension two. Using a similar technique, we show that there is a global attractor for the convective nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation with degenerate mobility and singular potential in dimension three.