Asymptotic uniform boundedness of energy solutions to the Penrose-Fife model (Q1935531)

The regularity and boundedness at positive times of weak solutions to the non-conserved and conserved Penrose-Fife phase-field models are investigated. Recall that these models arise from the modelling of phase transitions and describe the space and time evolution of a phase field \(\chi\) characterizing the phase of the material and the absolute temperature \(\theta>0\). The temperature evolves according to \(\partial_t \theta + \Delta (\theta^{-1}) =-\partial_t\chi\) in \((0,\infty)\times\Omega\) while \(\chi\) solves \(\partial_t\chi - \Delta\chi + b(\chi)- \chi = \theta^{-1}\) in \((0,\infty)\times\Omega\) in the non-conserved case and \(\partial_t\chi - \Delta w = 0\), \(w = - \Delta\chi + b(\chi)- \chi - \theta^{-1}\) in \((0,\infty)\times\Omega\) in the conserved case. This system is supplemented with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions for \(\theta^{-1}\), \(\chi\), and \(w\) on the smooth boundary of the open subset \(\Omega\) of \(\mathbb{R}^N\), \(N=2,3\), and initial conditions \((\theta_0,\chi_0)\). It is assumed that \(\chi_0\in H^1(\Omega)\) is such that \(\int_0^{\chi_0} b(r) dr \in L^1(\Omega)\) while \(\theta_0\) belongs to \(H^1(\Omega)'\) and is positive in a suitable weak sense. Finally, \(b\) is a locally Lipschitz continuous and non-decreasing function on some interval \(I\) containing \(0\) and satisfies \(b(0)=0\) and \(b(r) \mathrm{sign}(r) , b'(r) \to \infty\) as \(r\to\partial I\). When \(\theta_0\in L^2(\Omega)\), the well-posedness of these systems has been already established, and the first contribution of the paper under review is to prove well-posedness without this additional assumption, weakening in an appropriate way the notion of solution. It is next shown that these solutions enjoy regularizing properties for positive times: in particular, \(\theta^{-1} \in L^\infty(\tau,\infty;(L^\infty\cap H^1)(\Omega))\), \(\chi\in L^\infty(\tau,\infty;H^2(\Omega))\), and \(b(\chi)\in L^\infty(\tau,\infty;L^2(\Omega))\) for all \(\tau>0\). It is also proved that \(\theta\in L^\infty((\tau,\infty) \times \Omega)\) for all \(\tau>0\) provided \(\theta_0\in L^p(\Omega)\) for some \(p>3\).