Analysis and simulations of multifrequency induction hardening (Q474994)

The authors present and study a model accounting for induction hardening of steel. They consider a domain \(D\subset \mathbb{R}^{3}\) containing the inductor coil \(\Omega \) and the steel workpiece \(\Sigma \), assuming that \( \overline{\Omega }\subset D\), \(\overline{\Sigma }\subset D\) and \(\overline{ \Omega }\cap \overline{\Sigma }\neq \varnothing \), \(\partial \Omega \), \( \partial \Sigma \) and \(\partial D\) being supposed to belong to \(C^{1,1}\). The authors look for a triple \((A,\vartheta ,z)\) which satisfies a variational vector potential formulation of Maxwell's equations for the magnetic potential \(A\), a parabolic heat equation for the temperature \( \vartheta \) and a first-order differential equation for the austenite fraction \(z\) inside the steel workpiece. Robin type boundary conditions are imposed to the temperature \(\vartheta \) on \(\partial \Sigma \times (0,T)\) and initial conditions are given for each element of the triple. The main result of the paper proves the existence of a unique weak solution to this coupled problem in Sobolev spaces, under hypotheses on the data. The authors also prove stability estimates for this solution. For the proof of the existence and uniqueness result, the authors mainly use Schauder's fixed point theorem and they establish uniform estimates on the local in time solution. The last part of the paper briefly presents numerical results concerning the resolution of this problem which is based on curl-conforming finite elements as introduced by \textit{J.-C. Nedelec} [Numer. Math. 35, 315--341 (1980; Zbl 0419.65069)].