Micropolar fluids. Theory and applications (Q1276264): Difference between revisions

Micropolar theories are special cases of micromorphic theories in which deformable microstructures of material particles are taken into account. In the last three decades they became well-established theories, and several models were developed to better explain various physical phenomena in diverse engineering applications. Micropolar fluids are proposed to model fluids made of sphere-like rigid material particles. Hence every particle of a micropolar fluid has six degrees of freedom, three translational and three rotational, and balance equations corresponding to linear and angular momenta provide two vectorial differential equations for the independent velocity and angular velocity vectors associated with particles. Since an additional dissipation mechanism for the angular momentum due to the friction between rotating particles is involved, one expects that micropolar flows become more stable than their classical counterparts. The present book deals with the mathematical structure of flows of microisotropic micropolar fluids in finite domains. The constitutive relations are assumed to be linear. However, field equations for the velocity vector and the angular velocity vector are nonlinear due to the convective terms. The book comprises five chapters organized in three parts: I -- Description of the model, II -- Mathematical analysis, III -- Applications. The book is rather well documented with 206 references. Chapter I-1 ``Ordinary and polar fluids'' is a concise explanatory introduction to the kinematics, dynamics, thermodynamics and linear constitutive theory of micropolar fluids. Chapter II-1 ``Mathematical preliminaries'' is mainly a compilation of several results of linear functional analysis which will be used later in the mathematical treatment of field equations of micropolar fluids. The main emphasis is on fixed point theorems, function spaces such as Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces, and on several embedding theorems. Chapter II-2 ``Stationary problems'' deals with the existence and uniqueness theorems for strong or weak solutions of steady micropolar flows in bounded and smooth domains with homogeneous boundary conditions. Well-posedness of the theory, namely the continuous dependence of appropriate norms of the solution on the norms of exterior agents, is also studied in detail. Micropolar flows with heat convection and the mixture of two micropolar fluids are considered within the same context. By expressing the field equations in the form of variational inequalities, some problems with simple constraints are formulated by introducing penalty operators. Chapter II-3 ``Nonstationary problems'' is concerned with the study of mathematical structure of time-dependent micropolar flows. To this end, appropriate function spaces are first defined, and certain inequalities between functional norms are obtained. By employing these results, the author proves the existence and uniqueness theorems associated with strong and weak solutions for unsteady micropolar fluids in bounded and smooth domains within a finite time interval with homogeneous boundary conditions and under properly prescribed external agents and initial conditions. It is also shown that it is possible to construct a sequence of solutions which converge even for large time if Newtonian viscosity is larger than a definite value. Nonhomogeneous flows and heat-conducting flows are also treated in this chapter. Chapter III-1 ``Selected applications'' contains various applications of the general theory. First, the micropolar generalization of the Reynolds lubrication theory is considered. Then the author treats a micropolar flow in a porous medium with periodically distributed cavities by employing a homogenization procedure based on two-scale convergence. Some standard exact solutions such as Poiseuille and Couette flows between parallel planes and squeezing of a narrow film between parallel plates are also given. The book is primarily concerned with the application of functional analytic methods to reveal the existence and uniqueness of solutions for the motion of micropolar fluids in bounded smooth domains. The methods are employed in a very ingenious way, and hence the book is quite instructive to those who wish to master functional analytic approaches in the study of field equations in various branches of continuum physics. However, if the reader is not already quite familiar with functional analysis, it can be rather difficult to fully understand the intricacies involved in reaching the desired goal with the background material provided in the book. Additionally, there are a large number of printing errors which are not only irritating but also misleading for inexperienced readers.