Newton's problem of the body of minimal resistance with a bounded number of collisions (Q4828536)

From the text: ``Let \(\Omega \subset R^d\), \(d=2,3\), and let \((x,v)\mapsto (x^+_{\Omega}(x,v),v^+_{\Omega}(x,v))\) be the scattering mappings of a billiard dynamical system in \(R^d\setminus\Omega\). We consider the integral (1) \(R(\Omega)=\int_{L^d}(v^+_\Omega(x,v^d)-v^d)dx\), where \(v^2=(0,-1)\), \(v^3=(0,0,-1)\) and \(L^d=R^{d-1}\times \{0\}\). The vector \(R(\Omega)\) is interpreted as the resistance of the set \(\Omega\) to a uniform flow of point particles falling vertically downward with unit velocity. The particles move freely outside \(\Omega\) and are reflected according to the law that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection at regular points of its boundary. We denote by \({\mathcal B}_d(a,H)\) the class of connected sets \(\Omega \subset R^d\) such that (i) \(B_a\times \{0\}\subset \Omega \subset B_a\times [0,H]\), where \(B_a=\{x\in R^{d-1}:|x|\leq a\}\) is a ball of radius \(a\) in \(R^{d-1}\), and (ii) the integral (1) is well defined, that is, the function \(v^+_\Omega(x,v^d)\) is defined on the subset of full measure of the set \(L^d\) and is measurable. We denote by \(m(\Omega)\) the maximum possible number of collisions between \(\Omega\) and a particle falling in the direction \(v^d\). We consider the problem of minimizing the resistance \(|R(\Omega)|\) given in (1) in the class \({\mathcal B}_d(a,H)\), \(d=2,3\), \(a>0\), \(H>0\). In addition, we consider the following problem: Determine the smallest \(m\) such that the set or the family of sets minimizing the resistance can be chosen so that the number of collisions with them is at most \(m\). In this paper we show that \[ \inf _{\Omega \in{\mathcal B}_d(a,H)}|R(\Omega)|=\rho_d(a,H), \] where \(\rho_2(a,H)=2a(1-H/\sqrt {a^2+H^2})\), \(\rho_3(a,H)=0\), and we construct the family of sets \(\Omega_d^{\epsilon}(a,H)\), \(\epsilon >0\), that minimizes the resistance, \(\lim_{\epsilon \to 0}|R(\Omega_d^{\epsilon}(a,H))|=\rho_d(a,H)\).''