Convergence of the pressure in the homogenization of the Stokes equations in randomly perforated domains (Q2118890)

The authors prove a homogenization result, especially focusing on the pressure, for the steady incompressible Stokes equations \(-\Delta u_{\varepsilon }+\nabla p_{\varepsilon }=f\), \(\nabla \cdot u_{\varepsilon }=0 \), posed in a domain \(D^{\varepsilon }\), which is obtained by removing from a bounded set \(D\subset \mathbb{R}^{d}\), \(d>2\) a random number of small balls having random centers and radii: \(D^{\varepsilon }=D\setminus H^{\varepsilon }\), with \(H^{\varepsilon }=\cup _{z_{i}\in \Phi \cap \frac{1}{ \varepsilon }D}B_{\varepsilon \frac{d}{d-2}\rho _{i}}(\varepsilon z_{i})\), where \(\Phi \) is a Poisson point process on \(\mathbb{R}^{d}\) with homogeneous intensity rate \(\lambda >0\), and the radii \(\{\rho _{i}\}_{z_{i}\in \Phi }\sqsubseteq \mathbb{R}_{+}\) are identically and independently distributed unbounded random variables which satisfy \( \left\langle \rho ^{(d-2)+\beta }\right\rangle <+\infty \) for some \(\beta >0 \), \(\left\langle \cdot \right\rangle \) being the expectation under the probability measure on the radii \(\rho _{i}\). The homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition \(u_{\varepsilon }=0\) is imposed in \(\partial D^{\varepsilon }\). The source term \(f\) is supposed to belong to \(H^{-1}(D; \mathbb{R}^{d})\) and the above problem has a solution \((u_{\varepsilon },p_{\varepsilon })\) which belongs to \(H_{0}^{1}(D^{\varepsilon };\mathbb{R} ^{d})\times L_{0}^{2}(D^{\varepsilon };\mathbb{R})\). The authors introduce the homogenized problem (Brinkman's equation): \(-\Delta u_{h}+\mu u_{h}+\nabla p_{h}=f\), \(\nabla \cdot u_{h}=0\), posed in \(D\), where \(\mu =C_{d}\lambda \left\langle \rho ^{d-2}\right\rangle I\), \(C_{d}>0\) being a constant which only depends on the dimension \(d\). The main result of the paper proves that for \(P\)-almost every \(\omega \in \Omega \) there exists a family of sets \(E^{\varepsilon }\sqsubseteq \mathbb{R}^{d}\) and a sequence \( r_{\varepsilon }\rightarrow 0\) such that \(H^{\varepsilon }\sqsubseteq E^{\varepsilon }\) and for \(\varepsilon \downarrow 0^{+}\) \(Cap(E^{\varepsilon }\setminus H^{\varepsilon })\rightarrow 0\), where \(Cap\) denotes the harmonic capacity in \(\mathbb{R}^{d}\). Further, the modification \(\widetilde{p} _{\varepsilon }\) of the pressure defined as \(\widetilde{p}_{\varepsilon }=p_{\varepsilon }-\frac{1}{\left\vert D_{r_{\varepsilon }}\setminus E^{\varepsilon }\right\vert }\int_{D_{r_{\varepsilon }}\setminus E^{\varepsilon }}p_{\varepsilon }\) in \(D_{r_{\varepsilon }}\setminus E^{\varepsilon }\) and \(\widetilde{p}_{\varepsilon }=p_{\varepsilon }\) in \( (D\setminus D_{r_{\varepsilon }})\cup E^{\varepsilon }\), satisfies for all \( q<\frac{d}{d-1}\) \(\widetilde{p}_{\varepsilon }\rightarrow p_{h}\) in \( L_{0}^{q}(D;\mathbb{R})\). Here \(D_{r}=\{x\in D:dist(x,\partial D)>r\}\). The key tool for the proof is an estimate on the Bogovski operator in \( D\setminus E^{\varepsilon }\). The authors also build appropriate test functions.