Auxiliary functions in the study of Stefan-like problems with variable thermal properties (Q2176466)

The authors prove the existence and uniqueness of an auxiliary function solution to the following nonlinear differential system (called modified error function): \[((1+\delta y)y^{\prime })^{\prime }+2x(1+\gamma y)y^{\prime }=0\] for \(x\in (0,+\infty )\) and with the conditions \( y(0)=0\), \(y(+\infty )=1\), where \(\delta, \gamma \in (-1,+\infty )\). This problem is associated to phase-change processes where some thermal coefficients are assumed to vary with the material temperature. The main result of the paper is a proof of the existence of a unique bounded analytic solution \(\Phi _{\delta \gamma }\) which satisfies \(0\leq \Phi _{\delta \gamma }(x)\leq 1\) for all \(x\geq 0\) if the coefficients \(\delta \), \(\gamma \) satisfy a boundedness hypothesis. The proof uses Banach's fixed point theory in an appropriate functional setting. The authors finally prove that the unique solution \(\Phi _{\delta \gamma }\) is increasing and if \(\delta \) is non-negative \(\Phi _{\delta \gamma }\) is concave.