Strictly decreasing functions of frequency occurring in a theory of heat conduction which takes account of thermomechanical coupling (Q1076538)

In this paper an interesting thermal conduction problem in one- dimensional coupled thermoelasticity is ingenuously treated. The region in consideration is an infinite slab of uniform thickness with fixed faces. By employing the quasistatic approximation in which the inertial term is neglected the displacement field is eliminated and an integrodifferential equation in terms of the temperature is obtained to describe unidirectional heat conduction within an inhomogeneous elastic slab. It is assumed that a time-dependent temperature which is an almost periodic function in the form \(f(t)=Re\sum_{\omega \in \Omega}F(\omega)\exp (i\omega t),\quad \Omega \subset {\mathbb{R}}^+\) and finite, \(F\in C\) is prescribed on one face while the other face is subjected to a controllable temperature of the same type. The control variable can be chosen as to minimize the mean energy of the thermoelastic slab. By imposing appropriate restrictions on the material coefficients and the kernel of the integral operator in the field equation the author proves in an elegant way that the minimum mean energy is expressible as \(\sum_{\Omega \in \Omega}p(\omega)| F(\omega)|^ 2\), where p(\(\omega)\) is a positive and strictly decreasing function of \(\omega >0\). This implies that the higher frequency components of the given boundary temperature are more easily controllable.