Effects of uncertainties in the domain on the solution of Neumann boundary value problems in two spatial dimensions (Q3147165)

The paper focuses on the impact of uncertainties in the domain of definition on the solution of Neumann boundary value problems (NBVPs) for second order elliptic partial differential equations. For this purpose, the authors study scalar NBVPs defined on a sequence of domains. That is the (nonrandom) uncertainty is described in terms of a sequence of domains. This sequence is supposed to converge in the sense of sets to a limit domain. Such uncertainties in the domain are natural since the domain is usually scanned with limited resolution. Then the related sequence of NBVP solutions \(u_n\) and its stability is examined. A central question is whether the related solutions \(u_n\) converge to the solution \(u\) as domains \(\Omega_n\) tend to \(\Omega\). First, it is shown that the classical variational formulation is not suitable for this type of problem as even a simple NBVP on a disk approximated by a pixel domain differs much from the solution on the original disk with smooth boundary. A new definition of the NBVP is introduced to avoid this difficulty by means of reformulated natural boundary conditions. Then the convergence of solutions of the NBVP is shown. The uniqueness of the limit solution, however, depends on the stability property of the limit domain. Finally, estimates of the difference between two NBVP solutions on two different but close domains are given. The paper is rather important since it investigates the discrepancy between the influence of the shape of the body and its geometrical model on the solution of BVPs (problem of model validation). Counterexamples are also provided. Thus, the notion of well-posedness of BVPs needs to be extended to a continuous dependence of the BVP solution on the domain of definition, i.e. to generalize Hadamard's ideas.