A level set approach to the wearing process of a nonconvex stone (Q1424342)

In previous work [SIAM J. Math. Anal. 33, 860--876 (2001; Zbl 1033.53059)] the authors formulated a mathematical model to describe the wearing process of a nonconvex stone, along the lines proposed by \textit{W. Firey} [Mathematika 21, 1--11 (1974; Zbl 0311.52003)] for the convex case. The nonconvexity of the stone has the consequence that the resulting evolution equation is nonlocal, which makes the analysis difficult. For this reason the authors make the simplifying (but unrealistic for applications) assumption that the boundary of the evolving stone is the graph of a function \(u:{\mathbb R}^n\times[0,\infty)\rightarrow{\mathbb R}\). Here the authors use the level set approach to obtain existence, comparison and stability results without this assumption.