In this paper, we analyze a PDE system arising in the modeling of phase transition and damage phenomena in thermoviscoelastic materials. The resulting evolution equations in the unknowns (absolute temperature), u (displacement), and χ (phase/damage parameter) are strongly nonlinearly coupled. Moreover, the momentum equation for u contains x-dependent elliptic operators, which degenerate at the pure phases (corresponding to the values x = 0 and x = 1), making the whole system degenerate. That is why, we have to resort to a suitable weak solvability notion for the analysis of the problem: it consists of the weak formulations of the heat and momentum equation, and, for the phase/damage parameter x, of a generalization of the principle of virtual powers, partially mutuated from the theory of rate-independent damage processes. To prove an existence result for this weak formulation, an approximating problem is introduced, where the elliptic degeneracy of the displacement equation is ruled out: in the framework of damage models, this corresponds to allowing for partial damage only. For such an approximate system, global-in-time existence and well-posedness results are established in various cases. Then, the passage to the limit to the degenerate system is performed via suitable variational techniques.

A degenerating PDE system for phase transitions and damage / E. Rocca, R. Rossi. - In: MATHEMATICAL MODELS AND METHODS IN APPLIED SCIENCES. - ISSN 0218-2025. - 24:7(2014), pp. 1265-1341. [10.1142/S021820251450002X]

A degenerating PDE system for phase transitions and damage

E. Rocca;R. Rossi
2014

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze a PDE system arising in the modeling of phase transition and damage phenomena in thermoviscoelastic materials. The resulting evolution equations in the unknowns (absolute temperature), u (displacement), and χ (phase/damage parameter) are strongly nonlinearly coupled. Moreover, the momentum equation for u contains x-dependent elliptic operators, which degenerate at the pure phases (corresponding to the values x = 0 and x = 1), making the whole system degenerate. That is why, we have to resort to a suitable weak solvability notion for the analysis of the problem: it consists of the weak formulations of the heat and momentum equation, and, for the phase/damage parameter x, of a generalization of the principle of virtual powers, partially mutuated from the theory of rate-independent damage processes. To prove an existence result for this weak formulation, an approximating problem is introduced, where the elliptic degeneracy of the displacement equation is ruled out: in the framework of damage models, this corresponds to allowing for partial damage only. For such an approximate system, global-in-time existence and well-posedness results are established in various cases. Then, the passage to the limit to the degenerate system is performed via suitable variational techniques.
Continuous dependence; Damage phenomena; Elliptic degenerate operators; Global existence of weak solutions; Nonlocal operators; Phase transitions; Thermoviscoelastic materials
Settore MAT/05 - Analisi Matematica
2014
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/246553
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