Free boundaries in rock mechanics (Q2401731)

The book presents an excellent application of free boundary problems in rock mechanics. These problems describe mainly porous medium flow problems. The text is divided into five chapters with an appendix. The first chapter presents a detailed introduction. It describes the corresponding boundary value problems with their classical and weak formulations and the simultaneous state-of-the-art of their solving. The second chapter deals with the Hele-Shaw problem, which describes the filtration of a pore liquid having a common unknown boundary with a static gas in pores. It is divided into two parts, investigating its classical and weak solutions, respectively. The existence and uniqueness of weak solutions are proved. In the largest third chapter, the authors consider a joint filtration of two immiscible incompressible viscous liquids. They investigate the evolution of the free boundary separating the fluids with different constant densities in an absolutely rigid solid body and in an elastic skeleton, respectively. The motion of the liquids is described by the Stokes equations, driven by the input pressure and the force of gravity. The authors apply deep results of the modern theory of partial differential equations in the proof of the main results. In the fourth chapter, different mathematical models describing in-situ leaching are derived. The chapter is divided into two parts describing a microscopic and a macroscopic model. A free boundary problem contains dynamic equations for the liquid velocity and pressure. The macroscopic description is in the form of integral identities solved by the homogenization method. The last chapter is devoted to the dynamics of cracks in rocks under frequently repeated heat impulses coming from the Earth's core. The authors apply here the equations of continuous mechanics in poroelastic media. The appendix contains elements of continuum mechanics used in the text. The references consist of 71 mainly mathematical citations. The book has a strongly mathematical character in spite of very practical applications from rock and porous mechanics. It can be recommended to graduate students and researchers in engineering and applied mathematics who are interested in deep results on solving free boundary problems and their applications.