In the perfect conductivity problem of composites, the electric field may become arbitrarily large as $\varepsilon$, the distance between the inclusions and the matrix boundary, tends to zero. The main contribution of this paper lies in developing a clear and concise procedure to establish a boundary asymptotic formula of the concentration for perfect conductors with arbitrary shape in all dimensions, which explicitly exhibits the singularities of the blow-up factor $Q[φ]$ introduced in [29] by picking the boundary data $φ$ of $k$-order growth. In particular, the smoothness of inclusions required for at least $C^{3,1}$ in [27] is weakened to $C^{2,α}$, $0<α<1$ here.
In the perfect conductivity problem, it is interesting to study whether the electric field can become arbitrarily large or not, in a narrow region between two adjacent perfectly conducting inclusions. In this paper, we show that the relative convexity of two adjacent inclusions plays a key role in the blowup analysis of the electric field and find some new phenomena. By energy method, we prove the boundedness of the gradient of the solution if two adjacent inclusions fail to be locally relatively strictly convex, namely, if the top and bottom boundaries of the narrow region are partially "flat…
We consider an insulated conductivity model with two neighboring inclusions of $m$-convex shapes in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ when $m\geq2$ and $d\geq3$. We establish the pointwise gradient estimates for the insulated conductivity problem and capture the gradient blow-up rate of order $\varepsilon^{-1/m+β}$ with $β=[-(d+m-3)+\sqrt{(d+m-3)^{2}+4(d-2)}]/(2m)\in(0,1/m)$, as the distance $\varepsilon$ between these two insulators tends to zero. In particular, the optimality of the blow-up rate is also demonstrated for a class of axisymmetric $m$-convex inclusions.
In this paper, the insulated conductivity model with two touching or close-to-touching inclusions is considered in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ with $d\geq3$. We establish the pointwise upper bounds on the gradient of the solution for the generalized $m$-convex inclusions under these two cases with $m\geq2$, which show that the singular behavior of the gradient in the thin gap between two inclusions is described by the first non-zero eigenvalue of an elliptic operator of divergence form on $\mathbb{S}^{d-2}$. Finally, the sharpness of the estimates is also proved for two touching axisymmetric insulators, …
In this paper, we are concerned with the effective elastic property of a two-phase high-contrast periodic composite with densely packed inclusions. The equations of linear elasticity are assumed. We first give a novel proof of the Flaherty-Keller formula for elliptic inclusions, which improves a recent result of Kang and Yu (Calc.Var.Partial Differential Equations, 2020). We construct an auxiliary function consisting of the Keller function and an additional corrected function depending on the coefficients of Lamé system and the geometry of inclusions, to capture the full singular term of the g…
This paper is the second part of a work devoted to the modelling of thin elastic plates with small, periodically distributed piezoelectric inclusions. We consider the equations of linear elasticity coupled with the electrostatic equation, with various kinds of electric boundary conditions. We derive the corresponding effective models when the thickness $a$ of the plate and the characteristic dimension $\varepsilon $ of the inclusions tend\ together to zero, in the two following situations: first when $a \simeq \varepsilon$, second when $a/\varepsilon$ tends to zero.
In high-contrast elastic composites, it is vitally important to investigate the stress concentration from an engineering point of view. The purpose of this paper is to show that the blowup rate of the stress depends not only on the shape of the inclusions, but also on the given boundary data, when hard inclusions are close to matrix boundary. First, when the boundary of inclusion is partially relatively parallel to that of matrix, we establish the gradient estimates for Lamé systems with partially infinite coefficients and find that they are bounded for some boundary data $φ$ while some $φ$ wi…
This work considers the inclusion detection problem of electrical impedance tomography with stochastic conductivities. It is shown that a conductivity anomaly with a random conductivity can be identified by applying the Factorization Method or the Monotonicity Method to the mean value of the corresponding Neumann-to-Dirichlet map provided that the anomaly has high enough contrast in the sense of expectation. The theoretical results are complemented by numerical examples in two spatial dimensions.
When two perfectly conducting inclusions are located closely to each other, the electric field concentrates in a narrow region in between two inclusions, and becomes arbitrarily large as the distance between two inclusions tends to zero. The purpose of this paper is to derive an asymptotic formula of the concentration which completely characterizes the singular behavior of the electric field, when inclusions are balls of the same radii in three dimensions.
The multifrequency electrical impedance tomography is considered in order to image a conductivity inclusion inside a homogeneous background medium by injecting one current. An original spectral decomposition of the solution of the forward conductivity problem is used to retrieve the Cauchy data corresponding to the extreme case of perfect conductor. Using results based on the unique continuation we then prove the uniqueness of multifrequency electrical impedance tomography and obtain rigorous stability estimates. Our results in this paper are quite surprising in inverse conductivity problem si…
We deal with the problem of determining an inclusion within an electrical conductor from electrical boundary measurements. Under mild a priori assumptions we establish an optimal stability estimate.
In this paper, we are concerned with the gradient estimate of the electric field due to two nearly touching dielectric inclusions, which is a central topic in the theory of composite materials. We derive accurate quantitative characterisations of the gradient fields in the transverse electromagnetic case within the quasi-static regime, which clearly indicate the optimal blowup rate or non-blowup of the gradient fields in different scenarios. There are mainly two novelties of our study. First, the sizes of the two material inclusions may be of different scales. Second, we consider our study in …
The purpose of this paper is to set out optimal gradient estimates for solutions to the isotropic conductivity problem in the presence of adjacent conductivity inclusions as the distance between the inclusions goes to zero and their conductivities degenerate. This difficult question arises in the study of composite media. Frequently in composites, the inclusions are very closely spaced and may even touch. It is quite important from a practical point of view to know whether the electric field (the gradient of the potential) can be arbitrarily large as the inclusions get closer to each other or …
In this paper we analyze the gradient blow-up of the solution to the conductivity problem in two dimensions in the presence of an inclusion with eccentric core-shell geometry. Assuming that the core and shell have circular boundaries that are nearly touching, we derive an asymptotic formula for the solution in terms of the single and double layer potentials with image line charges. We also deduce an integral formula with image line charges for the problem relating to two nearly touching separated conductors.
The problem of determining nonlinear neutral inclusions in (electrical or thermal)conductivity is considered. Neutral inclusions, inserted in a matrix containing a uniform applied electric field, do not disturb the field outside the inclusions. The well known Hashin coated sphere construction is an example of a neutral inclusion. In this paper, we consider the problem of constructing neutral inclusions from nonlinear materials. In particular, we discuss assemblages of coated ellipsoids.
We consider a periodic evolution inclusion defined on an evolution triple of spaces. The inclusion involves also a subdifferential term. We prove existence theorems for both the convex and the nonconvex problem, and we also produce extremal trajectories. Moreover, we show that every solution of the convex problem can be approximated uniformly by certain extremal trajectories (strong relaxation). We illustrate our results by examining a nonlinear parabolic control system.
In composite materials, the inclusions are frequently spaced very closely. The electric field concentrated in the narrow regions between two adjacent perfectly conducting inclusions will always become arbitrarily large. In this paper, we establish an asymptotic formula of the electric field in the zone between two spherical inclusions with different radii in three dimensions. An explicit blowup factor relying on radii is obtained, which also involves the digamma function and Euler-Mascheroni constant, and so the role of inclusions' radii played in such blowup analysis is identified.
We consider a nonlinear Neumann elliptic inclusion with a source (reaction term) consisting of a convex subdifferential plus a multivalued term depending on the gradient. The convex subdifferential incorporates in our framework problems with unilateral constraints (variational inequalities). Using topological methods and the Moreau-Yosida approximations of the subdifferential term, we establish the existence of a smooth solution.
We derive bounds on the volume of an inclusion in a body in two or three dimensions when the conductivities of the inclusion and the surrounding body are complex and assumed to be known. The bounds are derived in terms of average values of the electric field, current, and certain products of the electric field and current. All of these average values are computed from a single electrical impedance tomography measurement of the voltage and current on the boundary of the body. Additionally, the bounds are tight in the sense that at least one of the bounds gives the exact volume of the inclusion …
The reconstruction problem in electrical impedance tomography is highly ill-posed, and it is often observed numerically that reconstructions have poor resolution far away from the measurement boundary but better resolution near the measurement boundary. The observation can be quantified by the concept of distinguishability of inclusions. This paper provides mathematically rigorous results supporting the intuition. Indeed, for a model problem lower and upper bounds on the distinguishability of an inclusion are derived in terms of the boundary data. These bounds depend explicitly on the distance…
In the perfect conductivity problem of composite material, the electric field concentrates in a narrow region in between two inclusions and always becomes arbitrarily large when the distance between inclusions tends to zero. To characterize such singular behavior, we capture the leading term of the gradient and reveal that the blow-up rates are determined by their relative convexity of the two adjacent inclusions. On the other hand, a blow-up factor, which is a linear functional of boundary data, is found to determine the blow-up will occur or not.
In this article we continue our study of higher Sobolev regularity of flexible convex integration solutions to differential inclusions arising from applications in materials sciences. We present a general framework yielding higher Sobolev regularity for Dirichlet problems with affine data in $\text{int}(K^{lc})$. This allows us to simultaneously deal with linear and nonlinear differential inclusion problems. We show that the derived higher integrability and differentiability exponent has a lower bound, which is independent of the position of the Dirichlet boundary data in $\text{int}(K^{lc})$.…
In high-contrast composite materials, the electric field concentration is a common phenomenon when two inclusions are close to touch. It is important from an engineering point of view to study the dependence of the electric field on the distance between two adjacent inclusions. In this paper, we derive the upper and lower bounds of the gradient of solutions to the conductivity problem where two perfectly conducting inclusions are located very close to each other. To be specific, we extend the known results of Bao-Li-Yin (ARMA 2009) in two folds: First, we weaken the smoothness of the inclusion…
We consider a gradient estimate for a conductivity problem whose inclusions are two neighboring insulators in three dimensions. When inclusions with an extreme conductivity (insulators or perfect conductors) are closely located, the gradient can be concentrated in between inclusions and then becomes arbitrarily large as the distance between inclusions approaches zero. The gradient estimate in between insulators in three dimensions has been regarded as a challenging problem, while the optimal blow-up rates in terms of the distance were successfully obtained for the other extreme conductivity pr…
We study the stochastic homogenization of the system -div σ^ε= f^εσ^ε\in \partial ϕ^ε(\nabla u^ε), where (ϕ^ε) is a sequence of convex stationary random fields, with p-growth. We prove that sequences of solutions (σ^ε,u^ε) converge to the solutions of a deterministic system having the same subdifferential structure. The proof relies on Birkhoff's ergodic theorem, on the maximal monotonicity of the subdifferential of a convex function, and on a new idea of scale integration, recently introduced by A. Visintin.
When a convex perfectly conducting inclusion is closely spaced to the boundary of the matrix domain, a bigger convex domain containing the inclusion, the electric field can be arbitrary large. We establish both the pointwise upper bound and the lower bound of the gradient estimate for this perfect conductivity problem by using the energy method. These results give the optimal blow-up rates of electric field for conductors with arbitrary shape and in all dimensions. A particular case when a circular inclusion is close to the boundary of a circular matrix domain in dimension two is studied earli…
In this paper, we consider very high concentration of electric field in between infinitely many circular perfect conductors arranged closely in two rows. In stiff fiber-reinforced composite, shear stress concentrations occur in between neighboring fibers, and the electric field means shear stress in this paper. Due to material failure of composites, there have been intensive studies so far to estimate the field in between only a finite number of inclusions. Indeed, fiber reinforced composites contain a large number of stiff fibers, and the concentration can be strongly enhanced by some combina…
We consider the perturbation of an electric potential due to an insulating inclusion with corners. This perturbation is known to admit a multipole expansion whose coefficients are linear combinations of generalized polarization tensors. We define new geometric factors of a simple planar domain in terms of a conformal mapping associated with the domain. The geometric factors share properties of the generalized polarization tensors and are the Fourier series coefficients of a kind of generalized external angle of the inclusion boundary. Since the generalized external angle contains the Dirac del…
This work presents a new constructive uniqueness proof for Calderón's inverse problem of electrical impedance tomography, subject to local Cauchy data, for a large class of piecewise constant conductivities that we call "piecewise constant layered conductivities" (PCLC). The resulting reconstruction method only relies on the physically intuitive monotonicity principles of the local Neumann-to-Dirichlet map, and therefore the method lends itself well to efficient numerical implementation and generalization to electrode models. Several direct reconstruction methods exist for the related problem …
The inverse problem of electrical impedance tomography is severely ill-posed. In particular, the resolution of images produced by impedance tomography deteriorates as the distance from the measurement boundary increases. Such depth dependence can be quantified by the concept of distinguishability of inclusions. This paper considers the distinguishability of perfectly conducting ball inclusions inside a unit ball domain, extending and improving known two-dimensional results to an arbitrary dimension $d \geq 2$ with the help of Kelvin transformations. The obtained depth-dependent distinguishabil…
We consider the Lamé system arising from high-contrast composite materials whose inclusions (fibers) are nearly touching the matrix boundary. The stress, which is the gradient of the solution, always concentrates highly in the narrow regions between the inclusions and the external boundary. This paper aims to provide a complete characterization in terms of the singularities of the stress concentration by accurately capturing all the blow-up factor matrices and making clear the dependence on the Lamé constants and the curvature parameters of geometry. Moreover, the precise asymptotic expansions…
We are concerned with the Calderón problem of determining an unknown conductivity of a body from the associated boundary measurement. We establish a logarithmic type stability estimate in terms of the Hausdorff distance in determining the support of a convex polygonal inclusion by a single partial boundary measurement. We also derive the uniqueness result in a more general scenario where the conductivities are piecewise constants supported in a nested polygonal geometry. Our methods in establishing the stability and uniqueness results have a significant technical initiative and a strong potent…
We study the initial-boundary value problem for a class of diffusion equations with nonmonotone diffusion flux functions, including forward-backward parabolic equations and the gradient flows of nonconvex energy functionals, under the framework of partial differential inclusions using the method of convex integration and Baire's category. In connection with rank-one convex hulls of the corresponding matrix sets, we introduce a structural condition on the diffusion flux function, called Condition (OC), and establish the nonuniqueness and instability of Lipschitz solutions to the initial-boundar…
We deal with the problem of determining the shape of an inclusion embedded in a homogenous background medium. The multifre-quency electrical impedance tomography is used to image the inclusion. For different frequencies, a current is injected at the boundary and the resulting potential is measured. It turns out that the potential solves an elliptic equation in divergence form with discontinuous leading coefficient. For this inverse problem we aim to establish a logarithmic type stability estimate. The key point in our analysis consists in reducing the original problem to that of determining an…
In this paper we show the convergence of a semidiscrete time stepping θ-scheme on a time grid of variable length to the solution of parabolic operator differential inclusion in the framework of evolution triple. The multifunction is assumed to be strong-weak upper-semicontinuous and to have nonempty, closed and convex values, while the quasilinear operator present in the problem is required to be pseudomonotone, coercive and satisfy the appropriate growth condition. The convergence of piecewise constant and piecewise linear interpolants constructed on the solutions of time discrete problems is…
We study the insulated conductivity problem with inclusions embedded in a bounded domain in $\mathbb R^n$, for $n \ge 3$. The gradient of solutions may blow up as $\varepsilon$, the distance between inclusions, approaches to $0$. We established in a recent paper optimal gradient estimates for a class of inclusions including balls. In this paper, we prove such gradient estimates for general strictly convex inclusions. Unlike the perfect conductivity problem, the estimates depend on the principal curvatures of the inclusions, and we show that these estimates are characterized by the first non-ze…
In the region between two closely located stiff inclusions, the stress, which is the gradient of a solution to the Lamé system with partially infinite coefficients, may become arbitrarily large as the distance between interfacial boundaries of inclusions tends to zero. The primary aim of this paper is to give a sharp description in terms of the asymptotic behavior of the stress concentration, as the distance between interfacial boundaries of inclusions goes to zero. For that purpose we capture all the blow-up factor matrices, whose elements comprise of some certain integrals of the solutions t…
The size estimation problem in electrical impedance tomography is considered when the conductivity is a complex number and the body is two-dimensional. Upper and lower bounds on the volume fraction of the unknown inclusion embedded in the body are derived in terms of two pairs of voltage and current data measured on the boundary of the body. These bounds are derived using the translation method. We also provide numerical examples to show that these bounds are quite tight and stable under measurement noise.
We derive asymptotic expansions for the displacement at the boundary of a smooth, elastic body in the presence of small inhomogeneities. Both the body and the inclusions are allowed to be anisotropic. This work extends prior work of CapdeBoscq and Vogelius ({\em Math. Modelling Num. Anal.} 37, 2003) for the conductivity case. In particular, we obtain an asymptotic expansion of the difference between the displacements at the boundary with and without inclusions, under Neumann boundary conditions, to first order in the measure of the inclusions. We impose no geometric conditions on the inclusion…
We deal with the problem of estimating the volume of inclusions using a finite number of boundary measurements in electrical impedance tomography. We derive upper and lower bounds on the volume fractions of inclusions, or more generally two phase mixtures, using two boundary measurements in two dimensions. These bounds are optimal in the sense that they are attained by certain configurations with some boundary data. We derive the bounds using the translation method which uses classical variational principles with a null Lagrangian. We then obtain necessary conditions for the bounds to be attai…
