This paper concerns optimal gradient estimates of solutions for the perfect conductivity problem with closely spaced interfacial boundaries. The problem arises from composite material. Our estimates exhibit different blow up rates of the gradients, as the distance between the inclusions goes to zero, in dimensions n=2, n=3 and n\ge 4, which become higher as dimensions increase.
In this paper, we study the perfect and the insulated conductivity problems with multiple inclusions imbedded in a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^n, n\ge 2$. For these two extreme cases of the conductivity problems, the gradients of their solutions may blow up as two inclusions approach each other. We establish the gradient estimates for the perfect conductivity problems and an upper bound of the gradients for the insulated conductivity problems in terms of the distances between any two closely spaced inclusions.
We study the perfect conductivity problem when two perfectly conducting inclusions are closely located to each other in an anisotropic background medium. We establish optimal upper and lower gradient bounds for the solution in any dimension which characterize the singular behavior of the electric field as the distance between the inclusions goes to zero.
The insulated and perfect conductivity problems arising from high-contrast composite materials are considered in all dimensions. The solution and its gradient, respectively, represent the electric potential and field. The novelty of this paper lies in finding exact solutions for the insulated and perfect conductivity problems with concentric balls. Our results show that there appears no electric field concentration for the insulated conductivity problem, while the electric field for the perfect conductivity problem exhibits sharp singularity with respect to the small distance between interfaci…
In the perfect conductivity problem of composite material, the gradient of solutions can be arbitrarily large when two inclusions are located very close. To characterize the singular behavior of the gradient in the narrow region between two inclusions, we capture the leading term of the gradient and give a fairly sharp description of such asymptotics.
We consider the problem of recovering an isotropic conductivity outside some perfectly conducting or insulating inclusions from the interior measurement of the magnitude of one current density field $|J|$. We prove that the conductivity outside the inclusions, and the shape and position of the perfectly conducting and insulating inclusions are uniquely determined (except in an exceptional case) by the magnitude of the current generated by imposing a given boundary voltage. We have found an extension of the notion of admissibility to the case of possible presence of perfectly conducting and ins…
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.
We study the stress concentration, which is the gradient of the solution, when two smooth inclusions are closely located in a possibly anisotropic medium. The governing equation may be degenerate of $p-$Laplace type, with $1<p \leq N$. We prove optimal $L^\infty$ estimates for the blow-up of the gradient of the solution as the distance between the inclusions tends to zero.
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…
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.
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…
We propose and study a regularization method for recovering an approximate electrical conductivity solely from the magnitude of one interior current density field. Without some minimal knowledge of the boundary voltage potential, the problem has been recently shown to have nonunique solutions, thus recovering the exact conductivity is impossible. The method is based on solving a weighted least gradient problem in the subspace of functions of bounded variations with square integrable traces. The computational effectiveness of this method is demonstrated in numerical experiments.
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.
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…
We prove uniqueness for minimizers of the weighted least gradient problem \[\inf \left\lbrace \int_Ω a|Du|: \ \ u\in BV(Ω), \ \ u|_{\partial Ω}=f \right\rbrace.\] The weight function $a$ is assumed to be continuous and it is allowed to vanish in certain subsets of $Ω$. Existence is assumed a priori. Our approach is motivated by the hybrid inverse problem of imaging electric conductivity from interior knowledge (obtainable by MRI) of the magnitude of one current density vector field.
We consider the inverse problem of recovering an isotropic quasilinear conductivity from the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map when the conductivity depends on the solution and its gradient. We show that the conductivity can be recovered on an open subset of small gradients, hence extending a partial result to all real analytic conductivities. We also recover non-analytic conductivities with additional growth assumptions along large gradients. Moreover, the results hold for non-homogeneous conductivities if the non-homogeneous part is assumed known.
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, …
We study the insulated conductivity problem with inclusions embedded in a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^n$. The gradient of solutions may blow up as $\varepsilon$, the distance between inclusions, approaches to $0$. An upper bound for the blow up rate was proved to be of order $\varepsilon^{-1/2}$. The upper bound was known to be sharp in dimension $n = 2$. However, whether this upper bound is sharp in dimension $n \ge 3$ has remained open. In this paper, we improve the upper bound in dimension $n \ge 3$ to be of order $\varepsilon^{-1/2 + β}$, for some $β> 0$.
We study the insulated conductivity problem with inclusions embedded in a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^n$. The gradient of solutions may blow up as $\varepsilon$, the distance between inclusions, approaches to $0$. It was known that the optimal blow up rate in dimension $n = 2$ is of order $\varepsilon^{-1/2}$. It has recently been proved that in dimensions $n \ge 3$, an upper bound of the gradient is of order $\varepsilon^{-1/2 + β}$ for some $β> 0$. On the other hand, optimal values of $β$ have not been identified. In this paper, we prove that when the inclusions are balls, the optimal valu…
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…
When inclusions with extreme conductivity (insulator or perfect conductor) are closely located, the gradient of the solution to the conductivity equation can be arbitrarily large. And computation of the gradient is extremely challenging due to its nature of blow-up in a narrow region in between inclusions. In this paper we characterize explicitly the singular term of the solution when two circular inclusions with extreme conductivities are adjacent. Moreover, we show through numerical computations that the characterization of the singular term can be used efficiently for computation of the gra…
This paper is concerned with non-stationary flows of sheart-hinning fluids in a bounded two-dimensional C^{2;1} domain. Assuming perfect slip boundary conditions, we provide a proof of the existence of a solution with the Hölder continuous velocity gradients and pressure under condition that a stress tensor satisfies power-law with growth p\in[5/3; 2].
We consider the inverse problem of recovering an isotropic electrical conductivity from interior knowledge of the magnitude of one current density field generated by applying current on a set of electrodes. The required interior data can be obtained by means of MRI measurements. On the boundary we only require knowledge of the electrodes, their impedances, and the corresponding average input currents. From the mathematical point of view, this practical question leads us to consider a new weighted minimum gradient problem for functions satisfying the boundary conditions coming from the Complete…
We recover the gradient of a scalar conductivity defined on a smooth bounded open set in $\mathbb{R}^d$ from the Dirichlet to Neumann map arising from the $p$-Laplace equation. For any boundary point we recover the gradient using Dirichlet data supported on an arbitrarily small neighbourhood of the boundary point. We use a Rellich-type identity in the proof. Our results are new when $p \neq 2$. In the $p = 2$ case boundary determination plays a role in several methods for recovering the conductivity in the interior.
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…
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 consider a quasilinear nonhomogeneous, anisotropic Maxwell system in a bounded smooth domain of $\mathbb{R}^{3}$ with a strictly positive conductivity subject to the boundary conditions of a perfect conductor. Under appropriate regularity conditions, adopting a classical $L^{2}$-Sobolev solution framework, a nonlinear energy barrier estimate is established for local-in-time $H^{3}$-solutions to the Maxwell system by a proper combination of higher-order energy and observability-type estimates under a smallness assumption on the initial data. Technical complications due to quasilinearity, ani…
We prove uniqueness in the inverse conductivity problem for uniformly elliptic conductivities in $W^{s,p}(Ω)$, where $Ω\subset \mathbb R^n$ is Lipschitz, $3\leq n \leq 6$, and $s$ and $p$ are such that $ W^{s,p}(Ω)\not \subset W^{1,\infty}(Ω)$. In particular, we obtain uniqueness for conductivities in $W^{1,n}(Ω)$ ($n=3,4$). This improves on the result of the author and Tataru, who assumed that the conductivity is Lipschitz.
We show that the knowledge of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps given on an arbitrary open non-empty portion of the boundary of a smooth domain in $\mathbb{R}^n$, $n\ge 2$, for classes of semilinear and quasilinear conductivity equations, determines the nonlinear conductivities uniquely. The main ingredient in the proof is a certain $L^1$-density result involving sums of products of gradients of harmonic functions which vanish on a closed proper subset of the boundary.
We present a procedure for recovering the conformal factor of an anisotropic conductivity matrix in a known conformal class in a domain in Euclidean space of dimension greater than or equal to 2. The method requires one internal measurement, together with a priori knowledge of the conformal class (local orientation) of the conductivity matrix. This problem arises in the coupled-physics medical imaging modality of Current Density Impedance Imaging (CDII) and the assumptions on the data are suitable for measurements determinable from cross-property based couplings of the two imaging modalities C…
We study a class of second-order elliptic equations of divergence form, with discontinuous coefficients and data, which models the conductivity problem in composite materials. We establish optimal gradient estimates by showing the explicit dependence of the elliptic coefficients and the distance between interfacial boundaries of inclusions. The novelty of these estimates is that they unify the known results in the literature and answer open problem (b) proposed by Li-Vogelius (2000) for the isotropic conductivity problem. We also obtain more interesting higher-order derivative estimates, which…
This paper deals with the field enhancement, that is, the gradient blow-up, due to presence of a bow-tie structure of perfectly conducting inclusions in two dimensions. The bow-tie structure consists of two disjoint bounded domains which have corners with possibly different aperture angles. The domains are parts of cones near the vertices, and they are nearly touching to each other. We characterize the field enhancement using explicit functions and, as consequences, derive optimal estimates of the gradient in terms of the distance between two inclusions and aperture angles of the corners. The …
The paper concerns the multiscale modeling of a myelinated axon. Taking into account the microstructure with alternating myelinated parts and nodes Ranvier, we derive a nonlinear cable equation describing the potential propagation along the axon. We assume that the myelin is not a perfect insulator, and assign a low (asymptotically vanishing) conductivity in the myelin. Compared with the case when myelin is assumed to have zero conductivity, an additional potential arises in the limit equation. The coefficient in front of the effective potential contains information about the geometry of the m…
In this paper we study the validity of the so-called Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation for compressible viscous perfect gases in the whole three-dimensional space. Both the cases of uids with positive heat conductivity and zero conductivity are considered. For small perturbations of a constant equilibrium, we establish the global existence of unique strong solutions in a critical regularity functional framework. Next, taking advantage of Strichartz estimates for the associated system of acoustic waves, and of uniform estimates with respect to the Mach number, we obtain all-time convergence to …
We prove a new integrability principle for gradient variational problems in $\mathbb{R}^2$, showing that solutions are explicitly parameterized by $κ$-harmonic functions, that is, functions which are harmonic for the laplacian with varying conductivity $κ$, where $κ$ is the square root of the Hessian determinant of the surface tension.
