On multiscale homogenization problems in boundary layer theory (Q438630)

The paper describes the asymptotic behaviour of boundary layers in magnetohydrodynamics. The authors first recall some basic models for boundary layers: Prandtl equations, flow over a curved surface using appropriate systems of coordinates, boundary layer equations for non-Newtonian fluids or for non-homogeneous fluids, turbulent boundary layers and boundary layers in magnetohydrodynamics. They prove some existence and uniqueness results for such models. The main part of the paper considers the equation \(-\nu \sqrt{w^{\varepsilon }}w_{\psi \psi }^{\varepsilon }+w_{x}^{\varepsilon }+v_{0}^{\varepsilon }w_{\psi }^{\varepsilon }+2s^{\varepsilon }\sqrt{w^{\varepsilon }}=2U(U^{\prime }+s^{\varepsilon })\) which is obtained applying von Mises transformation to the stationary Prandtl equation and which is posed in the domain \(\{0<x<X,0<\psi <\infty \}\). The boundary conditions \(w^{\varepsilon }(x,0)=0\), \(w^{\varepsilon }(0,\psi )=w_{1}(\psi )\) are imposed together with the condition \( w^{\varepsilon }(x,\psi )\rightarrow _{\psi \rightarrow \infty }U^{\prime }(x)\). Here \(s(x,\xi ,\zeta )\) and \(v_{0}(x,\xi ,\zeta )\) are uniformly continuous functions which are 1-periodic with respect to \(\xi \) and \(\zeta \), \(s\) being nonnegative, \(s^{\varepsilon }\) is defined through \( s^{\varepsilon }(x)=s(x,x/\varepsilon ,x/\varepsilon ^{2})\) and the same occurs for \(v_{0}^{\varepsilon }\), \(U\) is a positive and smooth function which is increasing on \([0,X]\). The first main result of the paper proves an existence and uniqueness result for this equation, under some further hypotheses on the data of the problem. The second main result establishes the asymptotic behaviour of the solution \(w^{\varepsilon }\) to the solution \( w^{h}\) of a similar but homogenized problem. The third main result proves error estimates in the \(L^{\infty }\) and \(H^{0,1}\) norms for the stationary Prandtl equations. The paper ends with an application to boundary layers over a rough plate.