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 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 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 consider the supercooled Stefan problem, which captures the freezing of a supercooled liquid, in one space dimension. A probabilistic reformulation of the problem allows to define global solutions, even in the presence of blow-ups of the freezing rate. We provide a complete description of such solutions, by relating the temperature distribution in the liquid to the regularity of the ice growth process. The latter is shown to transition between (i) continuous differentiability, (ii) Holder continuity, and (iii) discontinuity. In particular, in the second regime we rediscover the square root…
We study a Hele-Shaw problem with a mushy region obtained as a Mesa type limit of one phase Stefan problems in exterior domains. We study the convergence, determine some of the qualitative properties and regularity of the unique limiting solution, and prove regularity of the free boundary of this limit under very general conditions on the initial data. Indeed, our results handle changes in topology and multiple injection slots.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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…
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.
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 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 study the Cauchy-Dirichlet problem associated to a phase transition modeled upon the degenerate two-phase Stefan problem. We prove that weak solutions are continuous up to the parabolic boundary and quantify the continuity by deriving a modulus. As a byproduct, these a priori regularity results are used to prove the existence of a so-called physical solution.
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.
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 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 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…
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 $α(n,p)$.
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…
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.
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 consider a family of multi-phase Stefan problems for a certain 1-d model of cell-to-cell adhesion and diffusion, which takes the form of a nonlinear forward-backward parabolic equation. In each material phase the cell density stays either high or low, and phases are connected by jumps across an `unstable' interval. We develop an existence theory for such problems which allows for the annihilation of phases and the subsequent continuation of solutions. Stability results for the long-time behaviour of solutions are also obtained, and, where necessary, the analysis is complemented by numerical…
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 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…
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…
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…
Optimal control of the singular nonlinear parabolic PDE which is a distributional formulation of multidimensional and multiphase Stefan-type free boundary problem is analyzed. Approximating sequence of finite-dimensional optimal control problems is introduced via finite differences. Existence of the optimal control and the convergence of the sequence of discrete optimal control problems both with respect to functional and control is proved. In particular, convergence of the method of finite differences, and existence, uniqueness and stability estimations are established for the singular PDE pr…
In this work, we consider the fractional Stefan-type problem in a Lipschitz bounded domain $Ω\subset\mathbb{R}^d$ with time-dependent Dirichlet boundary condition for the temperature $\vartheta=\vartheta(x,t)$, $\vartheta=g$ on $Ω^c\times]0,T[$, and initial condition $η_0$ for the enthalpy $η=η(x,t)$, given in $Ω\times]0,T[$ by \[\frac{\partial η}{\partial t} +\mathcal{L}_A^s \vartheta= f\quad\text{ with }η\in β(\vartheta),\] where $\mathcal{L}_A^s$ is an anisotropic fractional operator defined in the distributional sense by \[\langle\mathcal{L}_A^su,v\rangle=\int_{\mathbb{R}^d}AD^su\cdot D^sv…
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…
The aim of this note is to review some recent developments on the regularity theory for the stationary and parabolic obstacle problems. After a general overview, we present some recent results on the structure of singular free boundary points. Then, we show some selected applications to the generic smoothness of the free boundary in the stationary obstacle problem (Schaeffer's conjecture), and to the smoothness of the free boundary in the one-phase Stefan problem for almost every time.
Extinction rates for nonradial solutions to the Stefan problem
Universita degli Studi di Torino(都灵大学);ICREA(加泰罗尼亚高级研究院);Universitat de Barcelona(巴塞罗那大学);Centre de Recerca Matemàtica(数学研究中心);Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas(西班牙高等科学理事会数学科学研究所)
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.
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 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.
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.
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…