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We provide a complete classification of the radial solutions to a class of reaction diffusion equations arising in the study of thermal structures such as plasmas with thermal equilibrium or no flux at the boundary. In particular, our study includes

We give a comprehensive treatment of the parabolic Signorini problem based on a generalization of Almgren’s monotonicity of the frequency. This includes the proof of the optimal regularity of solutions, classification of free boundary points, the regularity of the regular set and the structure of the singular set.

Spatial patterns of movement are fundamental to the ecology of animal populations, influencing their social organization, mating systems, demography, and the spatial distribution of prey and competitors. However, our ability to understand the causes and consequences of animal home range patterns has been limited by the descriptive nature of the statistical models used to analyze them. InMechanistic Home Range Analysis, Paul Moorcroft and Mark Lewis develop a radically new framework for studying animal home range patterns based on the analysis of correlated random work models for individual movement behavior. They use this framework to develop a series of mechanistic home range models for carnivore populations. The authors' analysis illustrates how, in contrast to traditional statistical home range models that merely describe pattern, mechanistic home range models can be used to discover the underlying ecological determinants of home range patterns observed in populations, make accurate predictions about how spatial distributions of home ranges will change following environmental or demographic disturbance, and analyze the functional significance of the movement strategies of individuals that give rise to observed patterns of space use. By providing researchers and graduate students of ecology and wildlife biology with a more illuminating way to analyze animal movement,Mechanistic Home Range Analysiswill be an indispensable reference for years to come.

The economics literature is replete with examples of monotone comparative statics; that is, scenarios where optimal decisions or equilibria in a parameterized collection of models vary monotonically with the parameter. Most of these examples are manifestations of complementarity, with a common explicit or implicit theoretical basis in properties of a super-modular function on a lattice. Supermodular functions yield a characterization for complementarity and extend the notion of complementarity to a general setting that is a natural mathematical context for studying complementarity and monotone comparative statics. Concepts and results related to supermodularity and monotone comparative statics constitute a new and important formal step in the long line of economics literature on complementarity. This monograph links complementarity to powerful concepts and results involving supermodular functions on lattices and focuses on analyses and issues related to monotone comparative statics. Don Topkis, who is known for his seminal contributions to this area, here presents a self-contained and up-to-date view of this field, including many new results, to scholars interested in economic theory and its applications as well as to those in related disciplines. The emphasis is on methodology. The book systematically develops a comprehensive, integrated theory pertaining to supermodularity, complementarity, and monotone comparative statics. It then applies that theory in the analysis of many diverse economic models formulated as decision problems, noncooperative games, and cooperative games.

High order accurate weighted essentially nonoscillatory (WENO) schemes are relatively new but have gained rapid popularity in numerical solutions of hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs) and other convection dominated problems. The main advantage of such schemes is their capability to achieve arbitrarily high order formal accuracy in smooth regions while maintaining stable, nonoscillatory, and sharp discontinuity transitions. The schemes are thus especially suitable for problems containing both strong discontinuities and complex smooth solution features. WENO schemes are robust and do not require the user to tune parameters. At the heart of the WENO schemes is actually an approximation procedure not directly related to PDEs, hence the WENO procedure can also be used in many non-PDE applications. In this paper we review the history and basic formulation of WENO schemes, outline the main ideas in using WENO schemes to solve various hyperbolic PDEs and other convection dominated problems, and present a collection of applications in areas including computational fluid dynamics, computational astronomy and astrophysics, semiconductor device simulation, traffic flow models, computational biology, and some non-PDE applications. Finally, we mention a few topics concerning WENO schemes that are currently under investigation.

We present an unconditionally energy stable finite difference scheme for the Modified Phase Field Crystal equation, a generalized damped wave equation for which the usual Phase Field Crystal equation is a special degenerate case. The method is based on a convex splitting of a discrete pseudoenergy and is semi-implicit. The equation at the implicit time level is nonlinear but represents the gradient of a strictly convex function and is thus uniquely solvable, regardless of time step-size. We present a local-in-time error estimate that ensures the pointwise convergence of the scheme.

The aim of this book is to summarize the current most effective methods for modeling, simulating, and optimizing metal forming processes, and to present the main features of new, innovative methods currently being developed which will no doubt be the industrial tools of tomorrow. It discusses damage (or defect) prediction in virtual metal forming, using advanced multiphysical and multiscale fully coupled constitutive equations. Theoretical formulation, numerical aspects as well as application to various sheet and bulk metal forming are presented in detail. Virtual metal forming is nowadays inescapable when looking to optimize numerically various metal forming processes in order to design advanced mechanical components. To do this, highly predictive constitutive equations accounting for the full coupling between various physical phenomena at various scales under large deformation including the ductile damage occurrence are required. In addition, fully 3D adaptive numerical methods related to time and space discretization are required in order to solve accurately the associated initial and boundary value problems. This book focuses on these two main and complementary aspects with application to a wide range of metal forming and machining processes.

Numerical solutions using finite element methods are considered for transient flow in a porous medium coupled to free flow in embedded conduits. Such situations arise, for example, for groundwater flows in karst aquifers. The coupled flow is modeled by the Darcy equation in a porous medium and the Stokes equations in the conduit domain. On the interface between the matrix and conduit, Beavers—Joseph interface conditions, instead of the simplified Beavers—Joseph—Saffman conditions, are imposed. Convergence and error estimates for finite element approximations are obtained. Numerical experiments illustrate the validity of the theoretical results.

A novel method is presented for explicitly solving inhomogeneous initial-boundary-value problems (IBVPs) on the half-line for a well-known coupled system of evolution partial differential equations. The so-called double-diffusion model, which is based on a simple, yet general, inhomogeneous diffusion configuration, describes accurately several important physical and mechanical processes and thus emerges in miscellaneous applications, ranging from materials science, heat-mass transport and solid–fluid dynamics, to petroleum and chemical engineering. For instance, it appears in nanotechnology and its inhomogeneous version has recently appeared in the area of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. Our approach is based on the extension of the unified transform (also called the Fokas method), so that it can be applied to systems of coupled equations. First, we derive formally effective solution representations and then justify a posteriori their validity rigorously. This includes the reconstruction of the prescribed initial and boundary conditions, which requires careful analysis of the various integral terms appearing in the formulae, proving that they converge in a strictly defined sense. The novel solution formulae are also utilized to rigorously deduce the solution’s regularity properties near the boundaries of the spatiotemporal domain. In particular, we prove uniform convergence of the solution to the data, its rapid decay at infinity as well as its smoothness up to (and beyond) the boundary axes, provided certain data compatibility conditions at the quarter-plane corner are satisfied. As a sample of important applications of our analysis and investigation of the boundary behavior of the solution and its derivatives, we both prove a novel uniqueness theorem and construct a ‘non-uniqueness counterexample’. These supplement the preceding ‘constructive existence’ result, within the framework of well-posedness. Moreover, one of the advantages of the unified transform is that it yields representations which are defined on contours in the complex Fourier λ -plane, which exhibit exponential decay for large values of λ . This important characteristic of the solutions is expected to allow for an efficient numerical evaluation; this is envisaged in future numerical-analytic investigations. The new formulae and the findings reported herein are also expected to find utility in the study of questions pertaining to well-posedness for nonlinear counterparts too. In addition, our rigorous approach can be extended to IBVPs for other significant models of mathematical physics and potentially also to higher-dimensional and variable-coefficient cases.

A mathematical model describing contaminant transfer through a backfill filter, accompanied by a water-softening chemical reaction, is constructed using a thermodynamic approach. The model incorporates experimental data on contaminant concentration at the lower boundary and accounts for sorption, convection, and chemical reactions with appropriate reagents. The mass transfer equations are formulated and reduced to a dimensionless form using stoichiometric coefficients. An analytical solution to the initial-boundary value problem is obtained by the means of integral transformations, with boundary conditions based on polynomial approximation of experimental data. Numerical analysis shows that for low convective transfer velocities, the concentration of the contaminant in the aqueous phase increases over time until a steady state regime is reached. In contrast, at higher velocities, a distinct time interval emerges during which the convective velocity has little to no influence on the concentration profile. Furthermore, this steady state regime occurs earlier when the filter performs more efficiently. The model also enables estimation of filter durability based on the maximum adsorptive capacity of the filter skeleton. These results illustrate the model’s effectiveness in capturing key transport dynamics in porous filtration systems.