Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Adrian Muntean

Publications and source records attributed to Adrian Muntean.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Periodic homogenization of a pseudo-parabolic equation via a spatial-temporal decomposition

Pseudo-parabolic equations have been used to model unsaturated fluid flow in porous media. In this paper it is shown how a pseudo-parabolic equation can be upscaled when using a spatio-temporal decomposition employed in the Peszyn'ska-Showalter-Yi paper [8]. The spatial-temporal decomposition transforms the pseudo-parabolic equation into a system containing an elliptic partial differential equation and a temporal ordinary differential equation. To strengthen our argument, the pseudo-parabolic equation has been given advection/convection/drift terms. The upscaling is done with the technique of periodic homogenization via two-scale convergence. The well-posedness of the extended pseudo-parabolic equation is shown as well. Moreover, we argue that under certain conditions, a non-local-in-time term arises from the elimination of an unknown.

math.AP↗

A lattice model approach to the morphology formation from ternary mixtures during the evaporation of one component

Stimulated by experimental evidence in the field of solution--born thin films, we study the morphology formation in a three state lattice system subjected to the evaporation of one component. The practical problem that we address is the understanding of the parameters that govern morphology formation from a ternary mixture upon evaporation, as is the case in the fabrication of thin films from solution for organic photovoltaics. We use, as a tool, a generalized version of the Potts and Blume-Capel models in 2D, with the Monte Carlo Kawasaki-Metropolis algorithm, to simulate the phase behaviour of a ternary mixture upon evaporation of one of its components. The components with spin $+1$, $-1$ and $0$ in the Blume-Capel dynamics correspond to the electron--acceptor, electron--donor and solvent molecules, respectively, in a ternary mixture used in the preparation of the active layer films in an organic solar cell. Further, we introduce parameters that account for the relative composition of the mixture, temperature, and interaction between the species in the system. We identify the parameter regions that are prone to facilitate the phase separation. Furthermore, we study qualitatively the types of formed configurations. We show that even a relatively simple model, as the present one, can generate key morphological features, similar to those observed in experiments, which proves the method valuable for the study of complex systems.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

The effect of environment knowledge in evacuation scenarios involving fire and smoke - a multiscale modelling and simulation approach

We study the evacuation dynamics of a crowd evacuating from a complex geometry in the presence of a fire as well as of a slowly spreading smoke curtain. The crowd is composed of two kinds of individuals: those who know the layout of the building, and those who do not and rely exclusively on potentially informed neighbors to identify a path towards the exit. We aim to capture the effect the knowledge of the environment has on the interaction between evacuees and their residence time in the presence of fire and evolving smoke. Our approach is genuinely multiscale - we employ a two-scale model that is able to distinguish between compressible and incompressible pedestrian flow regimes and allows for micro and macro pedestrian dynamics. Simulations illustrate the expected qualitative behavior of the model. We finish with observations on how mixing evacuees with different levels of knowledge impacts important evacuation aspects.

physics.soc-ph↗

Modelling interactions between active and passive agents moving through heterogeneous environments

We study the dynamics of interacting agents from two distinct inter-mixed populations: One population includes active agents that follow a predetermined velocity field, while the second population contains exclusively passive agents, i.e. agents that have no preferred direction of motion. The orientation of their local velocity is affected by repulsive interactions with the neighboring agents and environment. We present two models that allow for a qualitative analysis of these mixed systems. We show that the residence times of this type of systems containing mixed populations is strongly affected by the interplay between these two populations. After showing our modeling and simulation results, we conclude with a couple of mathematical aspects concerning the well-posedness of our models.

math.NA↗

Local weak solvability of a moving boundary problem describing swelling along a halfline

We obtain the local well-posedness of a moving boundary problem that describes the swelling of a pocket of water within an infinitely thin elongated pore. Our result involves fine a priori estimates of the moving boundary evolution, Banach fixed point arguments as well as an application of the general theory of evolution equations governed by subdifferentials.

math.AP↗

Driven particle flux through a membrane: Two-scale asymptotics of a diffusion equation with polynomial drift

Diffusion of particles through an heterogenous obstacle line is modeled as a two-dimensional diffusion problem with a one--directional nonlinear convective drift and is examined using two-scale asymptotic analysis. At the scale where the structure of heterogeneities is observable the obstacle line has an inherent thickness. Assuming the heterogeneity to be made of an array of periodically arranged microstructures (e.g. impenetrable solid rectangles), two scaling regimes are identified: the characteristic size of the microstructure is either significantly smaller than the thickness of the obstacle line or it is of the same order of magnitude. We scale up the convection-diffusion model and compute the effective diffusion and drift tensorial coefficients for both scaling regimes. The upscaling procedure combines ideas of two-scale asymptotics homogenization with dimension reduction arguments. Consequences of these results for the construction of more general transmission boundary conditions are discussed. We numerically illustrate the behavior of the upscaled membrane in the finite thickness regime and apply it to describe the transport of {\rm CO}$_2$ through paperboard.

math.AP↗

Fast drift effects in the averaging of a filtration combustion system - a periodic homogenization approach

We target at the periodic homogenization of a semi-linear reaction-diffusion-convection system describing filtration combustion, where fast drifts affect the competition between heat and mass transfer processes as well as the interplay between the surface nonlinear chemical reactions and the transport processes. To handle the heterogeneity of the medium, we rely on the concept of two-scale convergence with drift to obtain for suitably scaled model parameters the upscaled system of combustion equations together with the effective transport and reaction parameters. The main difficulty here is to treat the case of the system combined with the nonlinearity of the surface production.

math.AP↗

Corrector homogenization estimates for a non-stationary Stokes-Nernst-Planck-Poisson system in perforated domains

We consider a non-stationary Stokes-Nernst-Planck-Poisson system posed in perforated domains. Our aim is to justify rigorously the homogenization limit for the upscaled system derived by means of two-scale convergence in \cite{RMK12}. In other words, we wish to obtain the so-called corrector homogenization estimates that specify the error obtained when upscaling the microscopic equations. Essentially, we control in terms of suitable norms differences between the micro- and macro-concentrations and between the corresponding micro- and macro-concentration gradients. The major challenges that we face are the coupled flux structure of the system, the nonlinear drift terms and the presence of the microstructures. Employing various energy-like estimates, we discuss several scalings choices and boundary conditions.

math.AP↗

Trapping in bottlenecks: interplay between microscopic dynamics and large scale effects

We investigate the appearance of trapping states in pedestrian flows through bottlenecks as a result of the interplay between the geometry of the system and the microscopic stochastic dynamics. We model the flow trough a bottleneck via a Zero Range Process on a one dimensional periodic lattice. Particle are removed from the lattice sites with rates proportional to the local occupation numbers. The bottleneck is modelled by a particular site of the lattice where the updating rate saturates to a constant value as soon as the local occupation number exceeds a fixed threshold. We show that, for any finite value of such threshold, the stationary particle current saturates to the limiting bottleneck rate when the total particle density in the system exceeds the bottleneck rate itself.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

Correctors justification for a Smoluchowski--Soret--Dufour model posed in perforated domains

We study a coupled thermo-diffusion system that accounts for the dynamics of hot colloids in periodically heterogeneous media. Our model describes the joint evolution of temperature and colloidal concentrations in a saturated porous structure, where the Smoluchowski interactions are responsible for aggregation and fragmentation processes in the presence of Soret-Dufour type effects. Additionally, we allow for deposition and depletion on internal micro-surfaces. In this work, we derive corrector estimates quantifying the rate of convergence of the periodic homogenization limit process performed in \cite{KAM14} via two-scale convergence arguments. The major technical difficulties in the proof are linked to the estimates between nonlinear processes of aggregation and deposition and to the convergence arguments of the \emph{a priori} information of the oscillating weak solutions and cell functions in high dimensions. Essentially, we circumvent the arisen difficulties by a suitable use of the energy method and of fine integral estimates controlling interactions at the level of micro-surfaces.

math.AP↗

Corrector Estimates for the Homogenization of a Two-Scale Thermoelasticity Problem With a Priori Known Phase Transformations

We investigate corrector estimates for the solutions of a thermoelasticity problem posed in a highly heterogeneous two-phase medium and its corresponding two-scale thermoelasticity model which was derived in an earlier paper by two-scale convergence arguments. The medium in question consists of a connected matrix with disconnected, initially periodically distributed inclusions separated by a sharp interface undergoing a priori known phase transformations. While such estimates seem not to be obtainable in the fully coupled setting, we show that for some simplified scenarios optimal convergence rates can be proven rigorously. The main technique for the proofs are energy estimates using special reconstructions of two-scale functions and particular operator estimates for periodic functions with zero average. Here, additional regularity results for the involved functions are necessary.

math.AP↗

Homogenization of a Fully Coupled Thermoelasticity Problem for a Highly Heterogeneous Medium With a Priori Known Phase Transformations

We investigate a linear, fully coupled thermoelasticity problem for a highly heterogeneous, two-phase medium. The medium in question consists of a connected matrix with disconnected, initially periodically distributed inclusions separated by a sharp interface undergoing an a priori known interface movement due to phase transformations. After transforming the moving geometry to an $\varepsilon$-periodic, fixed reference domain, we establish the well-posedness of the model and derive a number of $\varepsilon$-independent a priori estimates. Via a two-scale convergence argument, we then show that the $\varepsilon$-dependent solutions converge to solutions of a corresponding upscaled model with distributed time-dependent microstructures.

math.AP↗

Existence of weak solutions for a pseudo-parabolic system coupling chemical reactions, diffusion and momentum equations

We study the weak solvability of a nonlinearly coupled system of parabolic and pseudo-parabolic equations describing the interplay between mechanics, chemical reactions, diffusion and flow in a mixture theory framework. Our approach relies on suitable discrete-in-time energy-like estimates and discrete Gronwall inequalities. In selected parameter regimes, these estimates ensure the convergence of the Rothe method for the discretized partial differential equations.

math.AP↗

Well-posedness and inverse Robin estimate for a multiscale elliptic/parabolic system

We establish the well-posedness of a coupled micro-macro parabolic-elliptic system modeling the interplay between two pressures in a gas-liquid mixture close to equilibrium that is filling a porous media with distributed microstructures. Additionally, we prove a local stability estimate for the inverse micro-macro Robin problem, potentially useful in identifying quantitatively a micro-macro interfacial Robin transfer coefficient given microscopic measurements on accessible fixed interfaces. To tackle the solvability issue we use two-scale energy estimates and two-scale regularity/compactness arguments cast in the Schauder's fixed point theorem. A number of auxiliary problems, regularity, and scaling arguments are used in ensuring the suitable Fréchet differentiability of the solution and the structure of the inverse stability estimate.

math.AP↗

Discrete and continuum links to a nonlinear coupled transport problem of interacting populations

We are interested in exploring interacting particle systems that can be seen as microscopic models for a particular structure of coupled transport flux arising when different populations are jointly evolving. The scenarios we have in mind are inspired by the dynamics of pedestrian flows in open spaces and are intimately connected to cross-diffusion and thermo-diffusion problems holding a variational structure. The tools we use include a suitable structure of the relative entropy controlling TV-norms, the construction of Lyapunov functionals and particular closed-form solutions to nonlinear transport equations, a hydrodynamics limiting procedure due to Philipowski, as well as the construction of numerical approximates to both the continuum limit problem in 2D and to the original interacting particle systems.

math.AP↗

A priori feedback estimates for multiscale reaction-diffusion systems

We study the approximation of a multiscale reaction-diffusion system posed on both macroscopic and microscopic space scales. The coupling between the scales is done via micro-macro flux conditions. Our target system has a typical structure for reaction-diffusion-flow problems in media with distributed microstructures (also called, double porosity materials). Besides ensuring basic estimates for the convergence of two-scale semi-discrete Galerkin approximations, we provide a set of {\em a priori} feedback estimates and a local feedback error estimator that help in designing a distributed-high-errors strategy to allow for a computationally efficient zooming in and out from microscopic structures. The error control on the feedback estimates relies on two-scale-energy, regularity, and interpolation estimates as well as on a fine bookeeping of the sources responsible with the propagation of the (multiscale) approximation errors. The working technique based on {\em a priori } feedback estimates is in principle applicable to a large class of systems of PDEs with dual structure admitting strong solutions.

math.AP↗

Fluctuations around mean walking behaviours in diluted pedestrian flows

Understanding and modeling the dynamics of pedestrian crowds can help with designing and increasing the safety of civil facilities. A key feature of crowds is its intrinsic stochasticity, appearing even under very diluted conditions, due to the variability in individual behaviours. Individual stochasticity becomes even more important under densely crowded conditions, since it can be nonlinearly magnified and may lead to potentially dangerous collective behaviours. To understand quantitatively crowd stochasticity, we study the real-life dynamics of a large ensemble of pedestrians walking undisturbed, and we perform a statistical analysis of the fully-resolved pedestrian trajectories obtained by a year-long high-resolution measurement campaign. Our measurements have been carried out in a corridor of the Eindhoven University of Technology via a combination of Microsoft Kinect 3D-range sensor and automatic head-tracking algorithms. The temporal homogeneity of our large database of trajectories allows us to robustly define and separate average walking behaviours from fluctuations parallel and orthogonal with respect to the average walking path. Fluctuations include rare events when individuals suddenly change their minds and invert their walking direction. Such tendency to invert direction has been poorly studied so far even if it may have important implications on the functioning and safety of facilities. We propose a novel model for the dynamics of undisturbed pedestrians, based on stochastic differential equations, that provides a good agreement with our experimental observations, including the occurrence of rare events.

physics.soc-ph↗