A two-scale model for the periodic homogenization of the wave equation (Q968871)

The authors introduce a new method for the description of the asymptotic behaviour of a wave equation with periodic coefficients. The problem is written as \[ \rho ^{\varepsilon }\partial _{tt}^{2}u^{\varepsilon }-\text{div} (a^{\varepsilon }\nabla u^{\varepsilon })=f^{\varepsilon }\text{ in }[0,T)\times \Omega, \] where \(\Omega \) is a bounded open subset of \(\mathbb{R}^{N}\) with Lipschitz boundary \(\partial \Omega \). Initial conditions \(u^{\varepsilon }(t=0)=u_{0}^{\varepsilon }\) and \(\partial _{t}u^{\varepsilon }(t=0)=v_{0}^{\varepsilon }\) are imposed in \(\Omega \). Boundary conditions \( u^{\varepsilon }=g^{\varepsilon }\) and \(a^{\varepsilon }\nabla u^{\varepsilon }\cdot n_{\Omega }=h^{\varepsilon }\) are respectively imposed on \([0,T)\times \Gamma _{D}\) and \([0,T)\times \Gamma _{N}\). \(\rho ^{\varepsilon }\) and \(a^{\varepsilon }\) may have oscillations with a periodic structure \(\rho ^{\varepsilon }=\rho (x/\varepsilon )\) and \( a^{\varepsilon }=a(x/\varepsilon )\), where \(\rho \) is a positive real-valued function and \(a\) is a \(N\times N\) symmetric matrix which satisfies the usual continuity and coercivity conditions. Introducing \(U^{\varepsilon }=(\sqrt{ a^{\varepsilon }}\nabla u^{\varepsilon },\sqrt{\rho ^{\varepsilon }}\partial _{t}u^{\varepsilon })\), the above wave equation can be transformed in a first-order system of size \(N+1\) with initial and boundary conditions. This system involves a linear operator \(A^{\varepsilon }\) with dense domain in \( L^{2}(\Omega )^{N+1}\). The authors first prove some further properties of the operator \(A^{\varepsilon }\). They then prove the existence of a unique weak solution \(U^{\varepsilon }\in L^{2}([0,T)\times \Omega )^{N+1}\) under some hypotheses on the data of the problem. They also prove uniform estimates on \(U^{\varepsilon }\). The first idea of the method consists to introduce Bloch waves. The authors introduce elliptic equations which can be associated to the original wave equation, which act on \(L^{2}(Y)\) and which are completed with \(k\)-quasiperiodic boundary conditions for varying \( k\in \mathbb{R}^{N}\). They study the spectrum of these elliptic operators looking carefully at the asymptotic behaviour of the eigenelements for large indices. The second idea is a two-scale transform. When replacing \(\Omega \) by the union \(\Omega _{\varepsilon }\) of large numbers of \(\varepsilon\)-cells which remove a thin layer around the boundary of \(\Omega \), the authors define a linear operator \(S_{k}^{\varepsilon }\) from \(L^{2}(Y)\) to \( L^{2}(\Omega \times Y)\) and a linear operator \(W_{k}^{\varepsilon }\) from \( L^{2}([0,T)\times \Omega )^{N+1}\) to \(L^{2}([0,T)\times (0,1)\times \Omega \times Y)^{N+1}\). The main result of the paper describes the structure of any weak limit of the bounded wave two scale transform \(W^{\varepsilon }U^{\varepsilon }\) as the sum of a term \(U_{H}\) which involves the solution of the homogenized wave problem and the solutions of first-order hyperbolic systems involving the parameter \(k\) which now belongs to some lattice \( L_{K}^{\ast }\).