We construct examples for the one-phase Stefan problem which show that $α$-concavity of the solution is in general not preserved in time, for $0 \le α<1/2$. In particular, this shows that, in contrast to the case of the heat equation for a fixed convex domain, log concavity is not preserved for solutions of the Stefan problem.
Two fractional Stefan problems are considered by using Riemann-Liouville and Caputo derivatives of order $α\in (0,1)$ such that in the limit case ($α=1$) both problems coincide with the same classical Stefan problem. For the one and the other problem, explicit solutions in terms of the Wright functions are presented. We prove that these solutions are different even though they converge, when $α\nearrow 1$, to the same classical solution. This result also shows that some limits are not commutative when fractional derivatives are used.
We develop a high-order energy method to prove asymptotic stability of flat steady surfaces for the Stefan problem with surface tension - also known as the Stefan problem with Gibbs-Thomson correction.
We study a space-fractional Stefan problem, where the non-local diffusion flux is modeled by the Caputo derivative. We obtain the unique existence of classical solution to this problem.
The non-local in space two-phase Stefan problem (a prototype in phase change problems) can be formulated via a singular nonlinear parabolic integro-differential equation which admits a unique weak solution. This formulation makes Stefan problem to be part of the General Filtration Problems; a class which includes the Porous Medium Equation. In this work, we prove that the weak solutions to both Stefan and Porous Media problems are continuous.
We consider local solutions of the two-phase Stefan problem with a "mushy" region. We show that if a (distributional) solution u is locally square integrable then the temperature is continuous.
We provide perturbative estimates for the one-phase Stefan free boundary problem and obtain the regularity of flat free boundaries via a linearization technique in the spirit of the elliptic counterpart established by the first author.
We prove existence and uniqueness of strong solutions to the two-phase Stefan problem with Gibbs-Thomson law where the free interface forms a ninety degree contact angle with the fixed boundary. We also discuss existence of global solutions and convergence to equilibria.
We derive the fractional version of one-phase one-dimensional Stefan model. We assume that the diffusive flux is given by the time-fractional Riemann-Liouville derivative, i.e. we impose the memory effect in the examined model. Furthermore, we find a special solution to this problem.
A one-dimensional fractional one-phase Stefan problem with a temperature boundary condition at the fixed face is considered. An integral relationship between the temperature and the free boundary is obtained which is equivalent to the fractional Stefan condition. Moreover, an exact solution of similarity type expressed in terms of Wright functions is given.
In this paper, we interest on some class of Stefan type problems. We prove the existence and uniqueness of renormalized solution in anisotropic Sobolev spaces with data belongs to $L^1- data,$ based on the properties of the renormalized trunctions and the generalized monotonicity method in the functional spaces.
This paper examines the well-posedness of the Stefan problem with a dynamic boundary condition. To show the existence of the weak solution, the original problem is approximated by a limit of an equation and dynamic boundary condition of Cahn-Hilliard type. By using this Cahn-Hilliard approach, it becomes clear that the state of the mushy region of the Stefan problem is characterized by an asymptotic limit of the fourth-order system, which has a double-well structure. This fact also raises the possibility of the numerical application of the Cahn-Hilliard system to the degenerate parabolic equat…
We assume that the Stefan problem with undercooling has a classical solution until the moment of contact of free boundaries and the free boundaries have continuous velocities until the moment of contact. Under these assumptions, we construct a smooth approximation of the global solution of the Stefan problem with undercooling, which, until the contact, gives the classical solution mentioned above and, after the contact, gives a solution which is the solution of the heat equation.
We obtain a generalized Neumann solution for the two-phase fractional Lamé-Clapeyron-Stefan problem for a semi-infinite material with constant boundary and initial conditions. In this problem, the two governing equations and a governing condition for the free boundary include a fractional time derivative in the Caputo sense of order $0<\al\leq 1$. When $ \al \nearrow $ 1 we recover the classical Neumann solution for the two-phase Lamé-Clapeyron-Stefan problem given through the error function.
In this paper we obtain self-similarity solutions for a one-phase one-dimensional fractional space one-phase Stefan problem in terms of the three parametric Mittag-Leffer function $E_{α,m;l}(z)$. We consider Dirichlet and Newmann conditions at the fixed face, involving Caputo fractional space derivatives of order $0 < α< 1$. We recover the solution for the classical one-phase Stefan problem when the order of the Caputo derivatives approaches one.
We study the regularity of the free boundary arising in a thermodynamically consistent two-phase Stefan problem with surface tension by means of a family of parameter-dependent diffeomorphisms, $L_p$-maximal regularity theory, and the implicit function theorem.
We prove locally in time the existence of a smooth solution for multidimensional two-phase Stefan problem for degenerate parabolic equations of the porous medium type. We establish also natural Hölder class for the boundary conditions in the Cauchy-Dirichlet problem for a degenerate parabolic equation.
We investigate the regularizing behavior of two-phase Stefan problem near initial data. The main step in the analysis is to establish that in any given scale, the scaled solution is very close to a Lipschitz profile in space-time. We introduce a new decomposition argument to generalize the preceding ones by Choi, Jerion and Kim([CJK1], [CJK2]) and by Choi and Kim([CK]) on one-phase problems.
We study the vanishing viscosity limit of a nonlinear diffusion equation describing chemical reaction interface or the spatial segregation interface of competing species, where the diffusion rate for the negative part of the solution converges to zero. As in the standard one phase Stefan problem, we prove that the positive part of the solution converges uniformly to the solution of a generalized one phase Stefan problem. This information is then employed to determine the limiting equation for the negative part, which is an ordinary differential equation.
We consider the inverse multiphase Stefan problem, where information on the heat flux on the fixed boundary is missing and must be found along with the temperature and free boundaries. Optimal control framework is pursued, where boundary heat flux is the control, and the optimality criteria consist of the minimization of the $L_2$-norm declination of the trace of the solution to the Stefan problem from the temperature measurement on the fixed right boundary. The state vector solves multiphase Stefan problem in a weak formulation, which is equivalent to Neumann problem for the quasilinear parab…
A fractional Stefan problem with a boundary convective condition is solved, where the fractional derivative of order $ α\in (0,1) $ is taken in the Caputo sense. Then an equivalence with other two fractional Stefan problems (the first one with a constant condition on $ x = 0 $ and the second with a flux condition)is proved and the convergence to the classical solutions is analyzed when $ α\nearrow 1$ recovering the heat equation with its respective Stefan condition.
We develop a framework for a unified treatment of well-posedness for the Stefan problem with or without surface tension. In the absence of surface tension, we establish well-posedness in Sobolev spaces for the classical Stefan problem. We introduce a new velocity variable which extends the velocity of the moving free-boundary into the interior domain. The equation satisfied by this velocity is used for the analysis in place of the heat equation satisfied by the temperature. Solutions to the classical Stefan problem are then constructed as the limit of solutions to a carefully chosen sequence o…
Two Stefan's problems for the diffusion fractional equation are solved, where the fractional derivative of order $ \al \in (0,1) $ is taken in the Caputo's sense. The first one has a constant condition on $ x = 0 $ and the second presents a flux condition $ T_x (0, t) = \frac {q} {t ^ {\al/2}} $. An equivalence between these problems is proved and the convergence to the classical solutions is analysed when $ \al \nearrow $ 1 recovering the heat equation with its respective Stefan's condition.
Two fractional two-phase Stefan-like problems are considered by using Riemann-Liouville and Caputo derivatives of order $α\in (0, 1)$ verifying that they coincide with the same classical Stefan problem at the limit case when $α=1$. For both problems, explicit solutions in terms of the Wright functions are presented. Even though the similarity of the two solutions, a proof that they are different is also given. The convergence when $α\nearrow 1$ of the one and the other solutions to the same classical solution is given. Numerical examples for the dimensionless version of the problem are also pr…
We consider the inverse multiphase Stefan problem with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition on a bounded Lipschitz domain, where the density of the heat source is unknown in addition to the temperature and the phase transition boundaries. The variational formulation is pursued in the optimal control framework, where the density of the heat source is a control parameter, and the criteria for optimality is the minimization of the $L_2-$norm declination of the trace of the solution to the Stefan problem from a temperature measurement on the whole domain at the final time. The state vector sol…
From the one-dimensional consolidation of fine-grained soils with threshold gradient, it can be derived a special type of Stefan problems where the seepage front, due to the presence of this threshold gradient, exhibits the features of a moving boundary. In this kind of problems, in contrast with the classical Stefan problem, the latent heat is considered to depend inversely with the rate of change of the seepage front. In this paper a one-phase Stefan problem with a latent heat that not only depends on the rate of change of the free boundary but also on its position is studied. The aim of thi…
We introduce a notion of viscosity solutions for the two-phase Stefan problem, which incorporates possible existence of a mushy region generated by the initial data. We show that a comparison principle holds between viscosity solutions, and investigate the coincidence of the viscosity solutions and the weak solutions defined via integration by parts. In particular, in the absence of initial mushy region, viscosity solution is the unique weak solution with the same boundary data.
In this paper we analyze the singular set in the Stefan problem and prove the following results: - The singular set has parabolic Hausdorff dimension at most $n-1$. - The solution admits a $C^\infty$-expansion at all singular points, up to a set of parabolic Hausdorff dimension at most $n-2$. - In $\mathbb R^3$, the free boundary is smooth for almost every time $t$, and the set of singular times $\mathcal S\subset \mathbb R$ has Hausdorff dimension at most $1/2$. These results provide us with a refined understanding of the Stefan problem's singularities and answer some long-standing open quest…
We study a nonlocal version of the one-phase Stefan problem which develops mushy regions, even if they were not present initially, a model which can be of interest at the mesoscopic scale. The equation involves a convolution with a compactly supported kernel. The created mushy regions have the size of the support of this kernel. If the kernel is suitably rescaled, such regions disappear and the solution converges to the solution of the usual local version of the one-phase Stefan problem. We prove that the model is well posed, and give several qualitative properties. In particular, the long-tim…
We prove strong convergence to singular limits for a linearized fully inhomogeneous Stefan problem subject to surface tension and kinetic undercooling effects. Different combinations of $σ\to σ_0$ and $δ\toδ_0$, where $σ,σ_0 \ge 0$ and $δ,δ_0 \ge 0$ denote surface tension and kinetic undercooling coefficients respectively, altogether lead to five different types of singular limits. Their strong convergence is based on uniform maximal regularity estimates.
We consider a one-dimensional one-phase inverse Stefan problem for the heat equation. It consists in recovering a boundary influx condition from the knowledge of the position of the moving front, and the initial state. We derived a logarithmic stability estimate that shows that the inversion is ill-posed. The proof is based on integral equations and unique continuation for holomorphic functions. We also proposed a direct algorithm with a regularization term to solve the nonlinear inverse problem. Several numerical tests using noisy data are provided with relative errors analysis.
The classical one-phase Stefan problem (without surface tension) allows for a continuum of steady state solutions, given by an arbitrary (but sufficiently smooth) domain together with zero temperature. We prove global-in-time stability of such steady states, assuming a sufficient degree of smoothness on the initial domain, but without any a priori restriction on the convexity properties of the initial shape. This is an extension of our previous result [28] in which we studied nearly spherical shapes.
We study a nonlocal version of the two-phase Stefan problem, which models a phase transition problem between two distinct phases evolving to distinct heat equations. Mathematically speaking, this consists in deriving a theory for sign-changing solutions of the equation, ut = J * v - v, v = Γ(u), where the monotone graph is given by Γ(s) = sign(s)(|s|-1)+ . We give general results of existence, uniqueness and comparison, in the spirit of [2]. Then we focus on the study of the asymptotic behaviour for sign-changing solutions, which present challenging difficulties due to the non-monotone evoluti…
We derive the quantitative modulus of continuity $$ ω(r)=\left[ p+\ln \left( \frac{r_0}{r} \right) \right]^{-α(n,p)}, $$ which we conjecture to be optimal, for solutions of the $p$-degenerate two-phase Stefan problem. Even in the classical case $p=2$, this represents a twofold improvement with respect to the 1984 state-of-the-art result by DiBenedetto and Friedman [J. reine angew. Math., 1984], in the sense that we discard one logarithm iteration and obtain an explicit value for the exponent $α(n,p)$.
In this article it is proved the existence of similarity solutions for a one-phase Stefan problem with temperature-dependent thermal conductivity and a Robin condition at the fixed face. The temperature distribution is obtained through a generalized modified error function which is defined as the solution to a nonlinear ordinary differential problem of second order. It is proved that the latter has a unique non-negative bounded analytic solution when the parameter on which it depends assumes small positive values. Moreover, it is shown that the generalized modified error function is concave an…
An explicit solution of a similarity type is obtained for a one-phase Stefan problem in a semi-infinite material using Kummer functions. Motivated by [D.A. Tarzia, Relationship between Neumann solutions for two phase Lamé-Clapeyron-Stefan problems with convective and temperature boundary conditions, Thermal Sci.(2016) DOI 10.2298/TSCI 140607003T, In press], and [Y. Zhou, L.J. Xia, Exact solution for Stefan problem with general power-type latent heat using Kummer function, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 84 (2015) 114-118], we consider a phase-change problem with a latent heat defined as a power fu…
We formulate a Stefan problem on an evolving hypersurface and study the well-posedness of weak solutions given $L^1$ data. To do this, we first develop function spaces and results to handle equations on evolving surfaces in order to give a natural treatment of the problem. Then we consider the existence of solutions for $L^\infty$ data; this is done by regularisation of the nonlinearity. The regularised problem is solved by a fixed point theorem and then uniform estimates are obtained in order to pass to the limit. By using a duality method we show continuous dependence which allows us to exte…
We study the long-time behavior of solutions of the one-phase Stefan problem in inhomogeneous media in dimensions $n \geq 2$. Using the technique of rescaling which is consistent with the evolution of the free boundary, we are able to show the homogenization of the free boundary velocity as well as the locally uniform convergence of the rescaled solution to a self-similar solution of the homogeneous Hele-Shaw problem with a point source. Moreover, by viscosity solution methods, we also deduce that the rescaled free boundary uniformly approaches a sphere with respect to Hausdorff distance.
We introduce and analyze a nonlocal version of the one-phase Stefan problem in which, as in the classical model, the rate of growth of the volume of the liquid phase is proportional to the rate at which energy is lost through the interphase. We prove existence and uniqueness for the problem posed on the line, and on the half-line with constant Dirichlet data, and in the radial case in several dimensions. We also describe the asymptotic behaviour of both the solution and its free boundary. The model may be of interest to describe the spreading of populations in hostile environments.
The two-phase Stefan problem describes the temperature distribution in a homogeneous medium undergoing a phase transition such as ice melting to water. This is accomplished by solving the heat equation on a time-dependent domain, composed of two regions separated by an a priori unknown moving boundary which is transported by the difference (or jump) of the normal derivatives of the temperature in each phase. We establish local-in-time well-posedness and a global-in-time stability result for arbitrary sufficiently smooth domains and small initial temperatures. To this end, we develop a higher-o…
The classical one-phase Stefan problem describes the temperature distribution in a homogeneous medium undergoing a phase transition, such as ice melting to water. This is accomplished by solving the heat equation on a time-dependent domain whose boundary is transported by the normal derivative of the temperature along the evolving and a priori unknown free-boundary. We establish a global-in-time stability result for nearly spherical geometries and small temperatures, using a novel hybrid methodology, which combines energy estimates, decay estimates, and Hopf-type inequalities.
Taking into account the recent works \cite{RoTaVe:2020} and \cite{Rys:2020}, we consider a phase-change problem for a one dimensional material with a non-local flux, expressed in terms of the Caputo derivative, which derives in a space-fractional Stefan problem. We prove existence of a unique solution to a phase-change problem with the fractional Neumann boundary condition at the fixed face $x=0$, where the domain, at the initial time, consists of liquid and solid. Then we use this result to prove the existence of a limit solution to an analogous problem with solid initial domain, when it is n…
We study the large-time behavior of solutions of a one-phase Stefan-type problem with anisotropic diffusion in periodic media on an exterior domain in a dimension $n \geq 3$. By a rescaling transformation that matches the expansion of the free boundary, we deduce the homogenization of the free boundary velocity together with the homogenization of the anisotropic operator. Moreover, we obtain the convergence of the rescaled solution to the solution of the homogenized Hele-Shaw-type problem with a point source and the convergence of the rescaled free boundary to a self-similar profile with respe…
The qualitative behavior of a thermodynamically consistent two-phase Stefan problem with surface tension and with or without kinetic undercooling is studied. It is shown that these problems generate local semiflows in well-defined state manifolds. If a solution does not exhibit singularities in a sense made precise below, it is proved that it exists globally in time and its orbit is relatively compact. In addition, stability and instability of equilibria is studied. In particular, it is shown that multiple spheres of the same radius are unstable, reminiscent of the onset of Ostwald ripening.
The work in this paper concerns the study of different approximations for one-dimensional one-phase Stefan-like problems with a space-dependent latent heat. It is considered two different problems, which differ from each other in their boundary condition imposed at the fixed face: Dirichlet and Robin conditions. The approximate solutions are obtained by applying the heat balance integral method (HBIM), a modified heat balance integral method, the refined integral method (RIM) . Taking advantage of the exact analytical solutions we compare and test the accuracy of the approximate solutions. The…