Search Results
Differential, energetic, and metric formulations for rate-independent processes
2009, Mielke, Alexander
We consider different solution concepts for rate-independent systems. This includes energetic solutions in the topological setting and differentiable, local, parametrized and BV solutions in the Banach-space setting. The latter two solution concepts rely on the method of vanishing viscosity, in which solutions of the rate-independent system are defined as limits of solutions of systems with small viscosity. Finally, we also show how the theory of metric evolutionary systems can be used to define parametrized and BV solutions in metric spaces.
Variational convergence of gradient flows and rate-independent evolutions in metric spaces
2012, Mielke, Alexander, Rossi, Riccarda, Savaré, Giuseppe
We study the asymptotic behaviour of families of gradient flows in a general metric setting, when the metric-dissipation potentials degenerate in the limit to a dissipation with linear growth. We present a general variational definition of BV solutions to metric evolutions, showing the different characterization of the solution in the absolutely continuous regime, on the singular Cantor part, and along the jump transitions. By using tools of metric analysis, BV functions and blow-up by time rescaling, we show that this variational notion is stable with respect to a wide class of perturbations involving energies, distances, and dissipation potentials. As a particular application, we show that BV solutions to rate-independent problems arise naturally as a limit of p-gradient flows, p>1, when the exponents p converge to 1.
BV solutions and viscosity approximations of rate-independent systems
2009, Mielke, Alexander, Rossi, Riccarda, Savaré, Giuseppe
In the nonconvex case solutions of rate-independent systems may develop jumps as a function of time. To model such jumps, we adopt the philosophy that rate independence should be considered as limit of systems with smaller and smaller viscosity. For the finite-dimensional case we study the vanishing-viscosity limit of doubly nonlinear equations given in terms of a differentiable energy functional and a dissipation potential which is a viscous regularization of a given rate-independent dissipation potential. The resulting definition of `BV solutions' involves, in a nontrivial way, both the rate-independent and the viscous dissipation potential, which play a crucial role in the description of the associated jump trajectories. We shall prove a general convergence result for the time-continuous and for the time-discretized viscous approximations and establish various properties of the limiting $BV$ solutions. In particular, we shall provide a careful description of the jumps and compare the new notion of solutions with the related concepts of energetic and local solutions to rate-independent systems.
Modeling solutions with jumps for rate-independent systems on metric spaces
2008, Mielke, Alexander, Rossi, Riccarda, Savaré, Giuseppe
Rate-independent systems allow for solutions with jumps that need additional modeling. Here we suggest a formulation that arises as limit of viscous regularization of the solutions in the extended state space. Hence, our parametrized metric solutions of a rate-independent system are absolutely continuous mappings from a parameter interval into the extended state space. Jumps appear as generalized gradient flows during which the time is constant. The closely related notion of BV solutions is developed afterwards. Our approach is based on the abstract theory of generalized gradient flows in metric spaces, and comparison with other notions of solutions is given.
Balanced viscosity (BV) solutions to infinite-dimensional rate-independent systems
2013, Mielke, Alexander, Rossi, Riccarda, Savaré, Giuseppe
Balanced Viscosity solutions to rate-independent systems arise as limits of regularized rate-independent flows by adding a superlinear vanishing-viscosity dissipation. We address the main issue of proving the existence of such limits for infinite-dimensional systems and of characterizing them by a couple of variational properties that combine a local stability condition and a balanced energy-dissipation identity. A careful description of the jump behavior of the solutions, of their differentiability properties, and of their equivalent representation by time rescaling is also presented. Our techniques rely on a suitable chain-rule inequality for functions of bounded variation in Banach spaces, on refined lower semicontinuity-compactness arguments, and on new BV-estimates that are of independent interest.
On the vanishing viscosity limit in parabolic systems with rate independent dissipation terms
2010, Mielke, Alexander, Zelik, Sergej V.
We consider quasilinear parabolic systems with a nonsmooth rate-independent dissipation term in the limit of very slow loading rates, or equivalently with fixed loading and vanishing viscosity $varepsilon>0$. Because for nonconvex energies the solutions will develop jumps, we consider the vanishing-viscosity limit for the graphs of the solutions in the extended state space in arclength parametrization, where the norm associated with the viscosity is used to keep the subdifferential structure of the problem. A crucial point in the analysis are new a priori estimates that are rate independent and that allows us to show that the total length of the graph remains bounded in the vanishing-viscosity limit. To derive these estimates we combine parabolic regularity estimates with ideas from rate-independent systems