Singularly perturbed diffusion-advection-reaction processes on extremely large three-dimensional curvilinear networks with a periodic microstructure -- efficient solution strategies based on homogenization theory (Q317140)

Motivated by applications in geophysics and in nanotechnology, this paper studies second-order linear diffusion-advection-reaction equations with space-varying defined on large one-dimensional networks, embedded in a three-dimensional region, with Kirchoff conditions at the branch points of the network. In the limit in which the size of the edges becomes small so that the networks becomes very dense, filling out the region, direct numerical solution of such system becomes infeasible due to the great number of edges, and the rapidly oscillating coefficients. The authors therefore use a two-scale asymptotic expansion to derive a macroscopic model, which is a second order elliptic boundary value problem, whose solution is the limit of the solutions of the network problem as the microscopic length scale of the network approaches zero, and which can be numerically solved using standard software. The effectiveness of this approach is also demonstrated using numerical examples, in which solutions of the network differential equations on dense networks are compared to the solution of the homogenized problem.