A one-phase Stefan problem for a semi-infinite material is investigated for special functional forms of the thermal conductivity and specific heat depending on the temperature of the phase-change material. Using the similarity transformation technique, an explicit solution for these situations are showed. The mathematical analysis is made for two different kinds of heat source terms, and the existence and uniqueness of the solutions are proved.
In this article we study a mathematical model of the heat transfer in semi infinite material with a variable cross section, when the radial component of the temperature gradient can be neglected in comparison with the axial component is considered. In particular, the temperature distribution in liquid and solid phases of such kind of body can be modelled by Stefan problem for the generalized heat equation. The method of solution is based on similarity principle, which enables us to reduce generalized heat equation to nonlinear ordinary differential equation. Moreover, we determine temperature …
One dimensional Stefan problems for a semi-infinite material with temperature dependent thermal coefficients are considered. Existence and uniqueness of solution are obtained imposing a Dirichlet or a Robin type condition at fixed face $x=0$. Moreover, it is proved that the solution of the problem with the Robin type condition converges to the solution of the problem with the Dirichlet condition at the fixed face. Computational examples are provided.
In this article we consider a mathematical model of an initial stage of closure electrical contact that involves a metallic vaporization after instantaneous exploding of contact due to arc ignition with power $P_0$ on fixed face $z=0$ and heat transfer in material with a variable cross section, when the radial component of the temperature gradient can be neglected in comparison with the axial component with heat flux and convective boundary conditions prescribed at the known free boundary $z = α(t)$. The temperature field in the liquid region of such kind of material can be modelled by Stefan …
In this paper, a one-phase Stefan-type problem for a semi-infinite material which has as its main feature a variable latent heat that depends on the power of the position and the velocity of the moving boundary is studied. Exact solutions of similarity type are obtained for the cases when Neumann or Robin boundary conditions are imposed at the fixed face. Required relationships between data are presented in order that these problems become equivalent to the problem where a Dirichlet condition at the fixed face is considered. Moreover, in the case where a Robin condition is prescribed, the limi…
A generalized Neumann solution for the two-phase fractional Lamé--Clapeyron--Stefan problem for a semi--infinite material with constant initial temperature and a particular heat flux condition at the fixed face is obtained, when a restriction on data is satisfied. The fractional derivative in the Caputo sense of order $\al \in (0,1)$ respect on the temporal variable is considered in two governing heat equations and in one of the conditions for the free boundary. Furthermore, we find a relationship between this fractional free boundary problem and another one with a constant temperature conditi…
Different one-phase Stefan problems for a semi-infinite slab are considered, involving a moving phase change material as well as temperature dependent thermal coefficients. Existence of at least one similarity solution is proved imposing a Dirichlet, Neumann, Robin or radiative-convective boundary condition at the fixed face. The velocity that arises in the convective term of the diffusion-convection equation is assumed to depend on temperature and time. In each case, an equivalent ordinary differential problem is obtained giving rise to a system of an integral equation coupled with a conditio…
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…
In this paper, we represent the exact solution of a two phase inverse spherical Stefan problem, where along with unknown temperature functions heat flux function has to be determined. Suggested solution is obtained from new form of integral error function and its properties which are represented in the form of series whose coefficients have to be determined. The model problem can be used for mathematical modeling and investigation of arc phenomena in electrical contacts.
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…
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…
We study a two-phase modified Stefan problem modeling solid combustion and nonequilibrium phase transition. The problem is known to exhibit a variety of non-trivial dynamical scenarios. We develop a priori estimates and establish well-posedness of the problem in weighted spaces of continuous functions. The estimates secure sufficient decay of solutions that allows for an analysis in Hilbert spaces. We demonstrate existence of compact attractors in the weighted spaces and prove that the attractor consists of sufficiently regular functions. This allows us to show that the Hausdorff dimension of …
The global-in-time existence of bounded weak solutions to the Maxwell-Stefan-Fourier equations in Fick-Onsager form is proved. The model consists of the mass balance equations for the partial mass densities and and the energy balance equation for the total energy. The diffusion and heat fluxes depend linearly on the gradients of the thermo-chemical potentials and the gradient of the temperature and include the Soret and Dufour effects. The cross-diffusion system exhibits an entropy structure, which originates from the thermodynamic modeling. The lack of positive definiteness of the diffusion m…
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…
In this paper we consider a one-dimensional one-phase Stefan problem corresponding to the solidification process of a semi-infinite material with a convective boundary condition at the fixed face. The exact solution of this problem, available recently in the literature, enable us to test the accuracy of the approximate solutions obtained by applying the classical technique of the heat balance integral method and the refined integral method, assuming a quadratic temperature profile in space. We develop variations of these methods which turn out to be optimal in some cases. Throughout this paper…
We obtain explicit expressions for one unknown thermal coefficient (among the conductivity, mass density, specific heat and latent heat of fusion) of a semi-infinite material through the one-phase fractional Lamé-Clapeyron-Stefan problem with an over-specified boundary condition on the fixed face $x=0$. The partial differential equation and one of the conditions on the free boundary include a time Caputo's fractional derivative of order $α\in (0,1) $. Moreover, we obtain the necessary and sufficient conditions on data in order to have a unique solution by using recent results obtained for the …
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.
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…
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 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…
We consider (a variant of) the external multi-particle diffusion-limited aggregation (MDLA) process of Rosenstock and Marquardt on the plane. Based on the recent findings of [11], [10] in one space dimension it is natural to conjecture that the scaling limit of the growing aggregate in such a model is given by the growing solid phase in a suitable "probabilistic" formulation of the single-phase supercooled Stefan problem for the heat equation. To address this conjecture, we extend the probabilistic formulation from [10] to multiple space dimensions. We then show that the equation that characte…
A thermodynamically consistent two-phase Stefan problem with temperature-dependent 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, it is proved that it exists globally in time and converges towards an equilibrium of the problem. In addition, stability and instability of equilibria is studied. In particular, it is shown that multiple spheres of the same radius are unstable if surface heat capacity is small; however, if kinetic undercooling …
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.
We address the existence and uniqueness of the so-called modified error function that arises in the study of phase-change problems with specific heat and thermal conductivity given by linear functions of the material temperature. This function is defined from a differential problem that depends on two parameters which are closely related with the slopes of the specific heat and the thermal conductivity. We identify conditions on these parameters which allow us to prove the existence of the modified error function. In addition, we show its uniqueness in the space of non-negative bounded analyti…
We analyze the state constrained inverse Stefan type parabolic free boundary problem as an optimal control problem in the Sobolev-Besov spaces framework. Boundary heat flux, density of heat sources, and free boundary are components of the control vector. Cost functional is the sum of the $L_2$-norm declinations of the temperature measurement at the final moment, the phase transition temperature, the final position of the free boundary, and the penalty term, taking into account the state constraint on the temperature. We prove the existence of optimal control, Frechet differentiability, and opt…
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 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.
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…
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.
We obtain for the two-phase Lamé-Clapeyron-Stefan problem for a semi-infinite material an equivalence between the temperature and convective boundary conditions at the fixed face in the case that an inequality for the convective transfer coefficient is satisfied. Moreover, an inequality for the coefficient which characterizes the solid-liquid interface of the classical Neumann solution is also obtained. This inequality must be satisfied for data of any phase-change material, and as a consequence the result given in Tarzia, Quart. Appl. Math., 39 (1981), 491-497 is also recovered when a heat fl…
Two-phase source and reaction coefficient Stefan type problems
International School of Economics, Kazakh-British Technical University（哈萨克-英国技术大学国际经济学院）；Institute of Mathematics and Mathematical Modeling（数学与数学建模研究所）；School of Digital Technologies, Narxoz University（纳尔克斯大学数字技术学院）
We consider the problem of recovering the initial condition in the one-dimensional one-phase Stefan problem for the heat equation from the knowledge of the position of the melting point. We first recall some properties of the free boundary solution. Then we study the uniqueness and stability of the inversion. The principal contribution of the paper is a new logarithmic type stability estimate that shows that the inversion may be severely ill-posed. The proof is based on integral equations representation techniques, and the unique continuation property for parabolic type solutions. We also pres…
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…
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…
While there is a long history of employing moving boundary problems in physics, in particular via Stefan problems for heat conduction accompanied by a change of phase, more recently such approaches have been adapted to study biological invasion. For example, when a logistic growth term is added to the governing partial differential equation in a Stefan problem, one arrives at the Fisher-Stefan model, a generalisation of the well-known Fisher-KPP model, characterised by a leakage coefficient $κ$ which relates the speed of the moving boundary to the flux of population there. This Fisher-Stefan m…
We consider a new Stefan-type problem for the classical heat equation with a latent heat and phase-change temperature depending of the variable time. We prove the equivalence of this Stefan problem with a class of boundary value problems for the nonlinear canonical evolution equation involving a source term with two free boundaries. This equivalence is obtained by applying a reduction to a Burgers equation and a reciprocal-type transformations. Moreover, for a particular case, we obtain a unique explicit solution for the two different problems.
The study of tree sap exudation, in which a (leafless) tree generates elevated stem pressure in response to repeated daily freeze-thaw cycles, gives rise to an interesting multi-scale problem involving heat and multiphase liquid/gas transport. The pressure generation mechanism is a cellular-level process that is governed by differential equations for sap transport through porous cell membranes, phase change, heat transport, and generation of osmotic pressure. By assuming a periodic cellular structure based on an appropriate reference cell, we derive an homogenized heat equation governing the g…
The technique of periodic homogenization with two-scale convergence is applied to the analysis of a two-phase Stefan-type problem that arises in the study of a periodic array of melting ice bars. For this "reduced model" we prove results on existence, uniqueness and convergence of the two-scale limit solution in the weak form, which requires solving a macroscale problem for the global temperature field and a reference cell problem at each point in space which captures the underlying phase change process occurring on the microscale. We state a corresponding strong formulation of the limit probl…
A two-phase solidification process for a one-dimensional semi-infinite material is considered. It is assumed that it is ensued from a constant bulk temperature present in the vicinity of the fixed boundary, which it is modelled through a convective condition (Robin condition). The interface between the two phases is idealized as a mushy region and it is represented following the model of Solomon, Wilson and Alexiades. An exact similarity solution is obtained when a restriction on data is verified, and it is analysed the relation between the problem considered here and the problem with a temper…
We consider the two dimensional free boundary Stefan problem describing the evolution of a spherically symmetric ice ball $\{r\leq λ(t)\}$. We revisit the pioneering analysis of [20] and prove the existence in the radial class of finite time melting regimes $$ λ(t)=\left\{\begin{array}{ll} (T-t)^{1/2}e^{-\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}\sqrt{|\ln(T-t)|}+O(1)}\\ (c+o(1))\frac{(T-t)^{\frac{k+1}{2}}}{|\ln (T-t)|^{\frac{k+1}{2k}}}, \ \ k\in \Bbb N^*\end{array}\right. \quad\text{ as } t\to T $$ which respectively correspond to the fundamental stable melting rate, and a sequence of codimension $k\in \Bbb N^*$ exc…
In this paper we consider the one-phase Stefan problem with surface tension, set in a two-dimensional strip-like geometry, with periodic boundary conditions respect to the horizontal direction $x_1\in\mathbb{T}$. We prove that the system is locally null-controllable in any positive time, by means of a control supported within an arbitrary open and non-empty subset. We proceed by a linear test and duality, but quickly find that the linearized system is not symmetric and the adjoint has a dynamic coupling between the two states through the (fixed) boundary. Hence, motivated by a Fourier decompos…
We consider the inverse Stefan type free boundary problem, where information on the boundary heat flux and density of the sources are missing and must be found along with the temperature and the free boundary. We pursue optimal control framework where boundary heat flux, density of sources, and free boundary are components of the control vector. The optimality criteria consists of the minimization of the $L_2$-norm declinations of the temperature measurements at the final moment, phase transition temperature, and final position of the free boundary. We prove the Frechet differentiability in Be…
We complete the Solomon-Wilson-Alexiades's mushy zone model (Letters Heat Mass Transfer, 9 (1982), 319-324) for the one-phase Lamé-Clapeyron-Stefan problem. We obtain explicit solutions when a convective or heat flux boundary condition is imposed on the fixed face for a semi-infinite material. We also obtain the necessary and sufficient condition on data in order to get these explicit solutions. Moreover, when these conditions are satisfied the two problems are equivalents to the same problem with a temperature boundary condition on the fixed face and therefore an inequality for the coefficien…
