Mathematical models of viscous friction (Q2515150)

The book is devoted to the mathematical study of a classical body immersed in an infinitely extended medium which may be a gas or a fluid. The book is divided into four chapters and is completed with an appendix. In the first chapter, the authors consider the motion of a heavy particle submitted to a constant force and interacting with many particles of the gas which builds the surrounding medium. The authors write the equations of motion for this interacting system of particles: \(M \ddot{r}(t)=F-\sum_{j}\nabla \psi (r(t)-r_{j}(t))\), \(m \ddot {r}_{i}(t)=-\nabla \psi (r_{i}(t)-r(t))-\sum_{j\neq i}\nabla \phi (r_{i}(t)-r_{j}(t))\), where \(F\) is a constant force, \(M\) and \(r\) (resp. \(m\) and \(r_{i}\)) are the mass and the particle position of the heavy particle (resp. \(i\)th particle, \(i\in \mathbb{N}\)), \( \psi \) and \(\phi \) being two-body potentials. The initial conditions \(r(0)=0\), \( r_{i}(0)\), \(\dot {r}(0)\), \(\dot{r}_{i}(0)\) are added. This system is obtained when taking the limit when \(n\rightarrow \infty \) of a finite system with the same equations but involving \(n\) particles in the medium. Then the authors give some insights on the thermodynamics of such systems leading to an expression of the Hamiltonian of the grand canonical ensemble and to the grand canonical partition function. The authors define the Gibbs state and the superstable potential. Restricting the study to the 1D case, the authors describe the asymptotic behavior of an \(n\)-particle dynamics assuming a restriction on the states \((r_{i},v_{i})\) through the bound \(Q(X)<\infty \) for some functional \(Q\). The main part of the chapter considers a quasi-one-dimensional problem, the gas being here confined in an infinitely extended tube of \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\). The authors again describe the asymptotic behavior of the solution to this system. They also prove the existence of a threshold for every Gibbs state above which some blow-up phenomena occur. The chapter ends with the proof of the violation of Ohm's law in this context. In Chapter 2, the authors consider the viscous friction occurring in a gas of free particles in the mean field approximation. They start with the description of a Vlasov system through the mass density \(f(x,v;t)\) at time \(t \) and at the point \((x,v)\) of the particle phase space. They write the coupled first-order system which describes the evolution of the position and of the velocity of the particle with initial data, the density being constant equal to some \(f_{0}(x,v)\). The main part of the chapter is devoted to the definition of a friction model in this case. The chapter ends with the study of bounded and of singular interactions. The motion of a body immersed in a Vlasov system is considered in Chapter 3. The authors recall the evolution equation which describes the motion of a body under the action of an external horizontal force in the \(x_{1}\)-direction and immersed in an homogeneous medium. They then consider a disk in dimension 3, a stick in dimension 2 and a point in dimension 1. They write the evolution equation for the mass density \(\left( \partial _{t}+v\cdot \nabla _{x}\right) f(x,v;t)=0\) for \(x\notin D(t)\), where \( D(t)=\{y\in \pi ^{\perp }(X(t)):\sum y_{i}^{2}<R^{2}\}\), where \(X(t)\) is the centre of the body and \(\pi ^{\perp }(X(t)\) is the plane orthogonal to the \( x_{1}\)-axis at \(X(t)\). The main result proves the existence of a flow whose velocity satisfies some uniform bounds. The authors then consider the cases of a convex body and of an elastic body. The chapter ends with considerations of diffusive boundary conditions and with some open problems. In the short final Chapter 4, the authors consider the motion of a body immersed in a Stokes flow. They start writing the Navier-Stokes equations. They specialize the motion of a sphere under rectilinear or rotary motion, and they refer to short appendices for further computations. A short appendix finally gives further insights into the infinite dynamics and into the Vlasov equations with infinite mass. Throughout the book, the authors gather up-to-date results concerning the motion of bodies in gases or fluids.