Blowup in a mass-conserving convection-diffusion equation with superquadratic nonlinearity (Q2731932)

Consider the initial-boundary value problem NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\begin{cases} u_t=u_{xx}+(f(u))_x, & (x,t)\in(0,1)\times (0,T)\\ u_x=-f(u), & (x,t)\in\{0,1\}\times (0,T)\\ u(x,0)=u_0(x), & x\in[0,1],\end{cases}\tag{1}NEWLINE\]NEWLINE where \(f\in C^2(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})\), \(u_0\in C^{2+\beta}\) \(([0,1],\mathbb{R})\) for some \(\beta>0\), \(u_0'(x)=-f(u_0(x))\) for \(x\in\{0,1\}\), and \(T\in(0,\infty]\). It is not difficult to see that general existence theory for parabolic equations with cutoff arguments guarantees that, for each such \(f\) and \(u_0\), there exists \(T>0\), such that (1) has a unique solution \(u\in C^{2+\beta,1+\beta/2}\). This paper is devoted to some conditions on \(f\) and \(u_0\) that guarantee finite-time blow up for positive solutions to (1).