Positive solutions of quasilinear parabolic systems with nonlinear boundary conditions (Q886193)

In this article the authors investigate the existence, uniqueness and asymptotic behavior of positive time-dependent solution of the system \[ \begin{aligned} \frac{\partial u_i}{\partial t}-\nabla \cdot ( a_iD_i( u_i) \nabla u_i) +\mathbf{b}_i( D_i(u_i) \nabla u_i)&= f_i( t,x,\mathbf{u}) \quad ( t>0,\;x\in \Omega), \\ D_i(u_i) \frac{\partial u_i}{\partial \nu }&= g_i(t,x, \mathbf{u})\quad (t>0,x\in \partial \Omega),\\ u_i(0,x)&=\psi _i(x) \quad (x\in \Omega),\;i=1,\dots,N, \end{aligned} \] where \(\mathbf{u}=(u_1,\dots ,u_N)\), \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\), and \(a_i\equiv a_i(t,x)\), \(\mathbf{b}_i\equiv \mathbf{b}_i(t,x)\equiv (b_i^{(1)},\dots ,b_i^{(n)})\), \(D_i(u_i)\), \(f_i(t,x, \mathbf{u}) \) and \(g_i(t,x,\mathbf{u}) \) are prescribed functions satisfying some needed conditions. The method used is the one of upper and lower solutions and its associated monotone iteration which leads not only to the existence of a positive solution but also to a constructive procedure for the solution which is potentially useful for the computation of numerical solutions. As applications of the global existence and asymptotic behavior of a solution for the general system (1), the authors gives three model problems including a porous medium problem, a heat transfer problem and a two-component competition model in ecology.