Variational convergence of nonlinear diffusion equations: Applications to concentrated capacity problems with change of phase (Q1373479)

A particular case of the wide class of so-called `concentrated capacity problems' arises from heat diffusion phenomena involving two adjoining three-dimensional bodies \(\Omega_1\), \(\Omega_2\), where a change of phase can occur or not. If the thermal conductivity of \(\Omega_2\) along the normal direction to the common boundary \(\Gamma = \partial \Omega_1 \cap \Omega_2\) becomes infinitely large, a possible way to model and study the limit situation is to consider a system of two parabolic equations in \(\Omega_1\) and \(\Gamma\). The comprehensive paper starts with a careful introduction containing the history and development of such a type of problems as well as different applications. In contrast to previous works by Magenes and other authors, who reduced the coupled system in \(\Omega_1\), \(\Gamma\) to a unique evolution equation on \(\Gamma\), the approach in the present paper goes back to the original coupled problem in \(\Omega_1\), \(\Omega_2\). It is shown that a corresponding variational formulation in the framework of abstract evolution equations is well suitable to pass to the limit (i.e. the shape of \(\Omega_2\) and some of the data in \(\Omega_2\), respectively, are related to a perturbation parameter going to \(0\)). The content of the paper can be summarized as follows. The asymptotic models are introduced in the first section followed by the main results on the concentrated capacity models. The abstract theory is presented in the third part, whereas the related proofs can be found in section 4 and, finally, the last section gives a detailed link between abstract and concrete situations.