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Now showing 1 - 10 of 29
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    Vanishing viscosities and error estimate for a Cahn-Hilliard type phase field system related to tumor growth
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 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.
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    Analysis of a diffuse interface model of multispecies tumor growth
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 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.
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    Unsaturated deformable porous media flow with phase transition
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2017) Krejčí, Pavel; Rocca, Elisabetta; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In the present paper, a continuum model is introduced for fluid flow in a deformable porous medium, where the fluid may undergo phase transitions. Typically, such problems arise in modeling liquid-solid phase transformations in groundwater flows. The system of equations is derived here from the conservation principles for mass, momentum, and energy and from the Clausius-Duhem inequality for entropy. It couples the evolution of the displacement in the matrix material, of the capillary pressure, of the absolute temperature, and of the phase fraction. Mathematical results are proved under the additional hypothesis that inertia effects and shear stresses can be neglected. For the resulting highly nonlinear system of two PDEs, one ODE and one ordinary differential inclusion with natural initial and boundary conditions, existence of global in time solutions is proved by means of cut-off techniques and suitable Moser-type estimates.
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    Generalized gradient flow structure of internal energy driven phase field systems
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2015) Bonetti, Elena; Rocca, Elisabetta
    In this paper we introduce a general abstract formulation of a variational thermomechanical model, by means of a unified derivation via a generalization of the principle of virtual powers for all the variables of the system, including the thermal one. In particular, choosing as thermal variable the entropy of the system, and as driving functional the internal energy, we get a gradient flow structure (in a suitable abstract setting) for the whole nonlinear PDE system. We prove a global in time existence of (weak) solutions result for the Cauchy problem associated to the abstract PDE system as well as uniqueness in case of suitable smoothness assumptions on the functionals.
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    On a diffuse interface model of tumor growth
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2014) Frigeri, Sergio; Grasselli, Maurizio; Rocca, Elisabetta
    We consider a diffuse interface model of tumor growth proposed by A. Hawkins-Daruud et al. This model consists of the Cahn-Hilliard equation for the tumor cell fraction φ nonlinearly coupled with a reaction-diffusion equation for ψ which represents the nutrient-rich extracellular water volume fraction. The coupling is expressed through a suitable proliferation functionp(φ) multiplied by the differences of the chemical potentials for φ and ψ. The system is equipped with no-flux boundary conditions which entails the conservation of the total mass, that is, the spatial average of φ+ψ. Here we prove the existence of a weak solution to the associated Cauchy problem, provided that the potential F and p satisfy sufficiently general conditions. Then we show that the weak solution is unique and continuously depends on the initial data, provided that p satisfies slightly stronger growth restrictions. Also, we demonstrate the existence of a strong solution and that any weak solution regularizes in finite time. Finally, we prove the existence of the global attractor in a phase space characterized by an a priori bounded energy.
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    Existence of solutions to a two-dimensional model for nonisothermal two-phase flows of incompressible fluids
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2014) Eleuteri, Michela; Rocca, Elisabetta; Schimperna, Giulio
    We consider a thermodynamically consistent diffuse interface model describing two-phase flows of incompressible fluids in a non-isothermal setting. The model was recently introduced in [12] where existence of weak solutions was proved in three space dimensions. Here, we aim at studying the properties of solutions in the two-dimensional case. In particular, we can show existence of global in time solutions satisfying a stronger formulation of the model with respect to the one considered in [12]. Moreover, we can admit slightly more general conditions on some material coefficients of the system.
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    A nonlocal quasilinear multi-phase system with nonconstant specific heat and heat conductivity
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2010) Colli, Pierluigi; Krejˇcí, Pavel; Rocca, Elisabetta; Sprekels, Jürgen
    In this paper, we prove the existence and global boundedness from above for a solution to an integrodifferential model for nonisothermal multi-phase transitions under nonhomogeneous third type boundary conditions. The system couples a quasilinear internal energy balance ruling the evolution of the absolute temperature with a vectorial integro-differential inclusion governing the (vectorial) phase-parameter dynamics. The specific heat and the heat conductivity $k$ are allowed to depend both on the order parameter $chi$ and on the absolute temperature $theta$ of the system, and the convex component of the free energy may or may not be singular. Uniqueness and continuous data dependence are also proved under additional assumptions.
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    A model for resistance welding including phase transitions and Joule heating
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2010) Hömberg, Dietmar; Rocca, Elisabetta
    In this paper we introduce a new model for solid-liquid phase transitions triggered by Joule heating as they arise in the case of resistance welding of metal parts. The main novelties of the paper are the coupling of the thermistor problem with a phase field model and the consideration of phase dependent physical parameters through a mixture ansatz. The PDE system resulting from our modelling approach couples a strongly nonlinear heat equation, a non-smooth equation for the the phase parameter (standing for the local proportion of one of the two phases) with quasistatic electric charge conservation law. We prove existence of weak solutions in the 3D case, while the regularity result and the uniqueness of solution is stated only in the 2D case. Indeed, uniqueness for the three dimensional system is still an open problem.
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    A temperature-dependent phase-field model for phase separation and damage
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2015) Heinemann, Christian; Kraus, Christiane; Rocca, Elisabetta; Rossi, Riccarda
    In this paper we study a model for phase separation and damage in thermoviscoelastic materials. The main novelty of the paper consists in the fact that, in contrast with previous works in the literature (cf., e.g., [21, 22]), we encompass in the model thermal processes, nonlinearly coupled with the damage, concentration and displacement evolutions. More in particular, we prove the existence of entropic weak solutions, resorting to a solvability concept first introduced in [10] in the framework of Fourier-Navier-Stokes systems and then recently employed in [9, 38] for the study of PDE systems for phase transition and damage. Our global-intime existence result is obtained by passing to the limit in a carefully devised time-discretization scheme.
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    Optimal distributed control of a nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard/Navier-Stokes system in 2D
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 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.