Extremal eigenvalue problems for two-phase conductors (Q2365391)

The conductor is to be a mixture of two materials with respective conductivities, specific heats, and densities. The temperature of the conductor, assumed encased in an ice bath, is the solution of the initial-boundary value problem. The authors derive necessary conditions, in terms of the generalized gradient, for the extremizers of the relaxed problems. These necessary conditions constitute pointwise characterizations of the optimal laminar geometries. For the two-dimensional case the conditions indicate that rank-one laminates are necessary for simple eigenvalues and that rank-two are necessary for the multiple-eigenvalue case, although in neither case have they been able to exhibit an explicit solution. In the one-dimensional case, they show that the problem may be reduced to one of constant conductivity.