Determination of unknown thermal coefficients in a non-classical Stefan problem (Q2147488)

The authors consider the 1D and non-classical Stefan problem \(\rho c\frac{ \partial u}{\partial t}-k\frac{\partial ^{2}u}{\partial x^{2}} =-F(u(0,t),t)=\lambda _{0}u(0,t)/t\), if \(0<x<s(t)\) and \(t>0\), \(u(s(t),t)=0\), \(t>0\), \(k\frac{\partial u}{\partial x}(s(t),t)=-\rho \ell \overset{.}{s}(t)\) , \(t>0\), \(k\frac{\partial u}{\partial x}(0,t)=-\frac{q_{0}}{\sqrt{t}}\), \(t>0\) . The coefficient \(\lambda _{0}\), the thermal conductivity \(k\), the mass density \(\rho \), the specific heat \(c\), and the latent heat \(\ell \) are positive constants. An over-specified convective boundary condition at the fixed face given by \(k\frac{\partial u}{\partial x}(0,t)=\frac{h_{0}}{\sqrt{t }}(u(0,t)-f)\), \(t>0\), is added where \(h_{0}>0\) characterizes the heat transfer and \(f\) represents the bulk temperature with \(0<u(0,t)<f\). The authors introduce the similarity variable \(\eta =\frac{x}{2a\sqrt{t}}\) , where \(a^{2}=\frac{k}{\rho c}\) is the diffusion coefficient and observe that the solution to the problem is given by \(u(x,t)=\Phi (\eta )\), \(s(t)=2a\mu _{0}\sqrt{t}\), \(t>0\), with an explicit expression of \(\Phi \) involving \( erf\) functions, Dawson's integral \(\exp (-x^{2})\int_{0}^{x}\exp (r^{2})dr\), and its integral. They prove properties of this Dawson's integral, of its integral and of functions involved in the expression of the solution, from which they derive sufficient conditions on different pairs of coefficients for the existence of a unique or of at least one solution to the problem.