Nonstationary radiative-conductive heat transfer problem in a periodic system of grey heat shields (Q548718)

The author considers a model of heat transfer in a 1D periodic array of shields and solves the corresponding initial boundary value problem for the temperature \(\vartheta(x,t)\). Denoting by \(\Omega_i=(x_{i-1},x_i)\) the elementary cell where \(x_i=\frac{i}{n}\), the temperature \(\vartheta(x,t)\) satisfies the linear heat equation on \(Q:=\Omega\times[0,T]\) with \(\Omega:=\bigcup_{i=1}^n\Omega_i\) but nonlinear boundary conditions of radiative type, and one has to solve, for \(i=1,2,\dots,n\) \[ \begin{aligned} c\rho\frac{\partial \vartheta}{\partial t}&= \lambda\;\frac{\partial^2 \vartheta}{\partial x^2}\quad\text{for }(x,t)\in Q_i,\\ \left.\lambda \frac{\partial \vartheta}{\partial x}\right|_{x=x_{i-1}}&= W_{i-1}\quad\text{for }t\in [0,T],\\ \left.\lambda \frac{\partial \vartheta}{\partial x}\right|_{x=x_i}&= W_i\quad\text{for }t\in [0,T],\\ \left. \vartheta\right|_{t=0}&= \vartheta_0\quad\text{for }x\in \Omega_i,\end{aligned} \tag{pde} \] with \(W_i=\kappa[ h(\vartheta_i^+)- h(\vartheta_i^-)]\) for \(0<i<n\), \(W_n= \kappa_r[ h(\vartheta_r)- h(\vartheta_n^-)]\) for \(0<i<n\), and \(W_0= \kappa_\ell[ h(\vartheta_0^+)- h(\vartheta_\ell)]\), where thermal conductivities satisfy \(0<\kappa, \kappa_r,\kappa_\ell\leq 1\), \(c,\rho,\lambda\) are positive parameters and \(\vartheta_{i-1}^+:=\vartheta(x_{i-1}+0,t)\), \(\vartheta_i^-:=\vartheta(x_i-0,t)\), for \(1\leq i\leq n\). The functions \(\vartheta_0,\vartheta_\ell\) and \(\vartheta_r\) are given such that \[ \begin{aligned} &\vartheta_0\in L^\infty(\mathbb R^+),\;\vartheta_\ell\in L^\infty(\Omega),\;\vartheta_r\in L^\infty(\Omega),\\ &\underline{\vartheta}\leq \vartheta_0(x)\leq \overline{\vartheta}\quad \forall x\in\Omega,\\ &\underline{\vartheta}\leq \vartheta_\ell(t),\vartheta_r(t)\leq \overline{\vartheta}\quad \forall t\in[0,T],\end{aligned} \tag{ibc} \] where \(\underline{\vartheta}\) and \(\overline{\vartheta}\) are fixed constants. The function \(h\in C^2(\mathbb R)\), modeling radiative effects, which may be taken as the ``Stefan-Boltzmann''-like expression \(h(\vartheta)=\sigma_0 |\vartheta|^3 \vartheta\), is supposed to be increasing on \(\mathbb R\) and satisfies \(h(\pm\infty)=\pm\infty\). The main result is then as follows. Under the assumptions (ibc), the problem (pde) has a unique weak solution \(\vartheta\) (in the distribution sense) which satisfies \[ \underline{\vartheta}\leq \vartheta(x,t)\leq \overline{\vartheta}\quad \forall (x,t)\in\Omega\times[0,T]. \]