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Charles M. Elliott

Publications and source records attributed to Charles M. Elliott.

47 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2016

Well-posedness of a fractional porous medium equation on an evolving surface

We investigate the existence, uniqueness, and $L^1$-contractivity of weak solutions to a porous medium equation with fractional diffusion on an evolving hypersurface. To settle the existence, we reformulate the equation as a local problem on a semi-infinite cylinder, regularise the porous medium nonlinearity and truncate the cylinder. Then we pass to the limit first in the truncation parameter and then in the nonlinearity, and the identification of limits is done using the theory of subdifferentials of convex functionals. In order to facilitate all of this, we begin by studying (in the setting of closed Riemannian manifolds and Sobolev spaces) the fractional Laplace--Beltrami operator which can be seen as the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map of a harmonic extension problem. A truncated harmonic extension problem will also be examined and convergence results to the solution of the harmonic extension will be given. For a technical reason, we will also consider some related extension problems on evolving hypersurfaces which will provide us with the minimal time regularity required on the harmonic extensions in order to properly formulate the moving domain problem. This functional analytic theory is of course independent of the fractional porous medium equation and will be of use generally in the analysis of fractional elliptic and parabolic problems on manifolds.

math.AP↗
arXiv2016

Double obstacle phase field approach to an inverse problem for a discontinuous diffusion coefficient

We propose a double obstacle phase field approach to the recovery of piece-wise constant diffusion coefficients for elliptic partial differential equations. The approach to this inverse problem is that of optimal control in which we have a quadratic fidelity term to which we add a perimeter regularisation weighted by a parameter sigma. This yields a functional which is optimised over a set of diffusion coefficients subject to a state equation which is the underlying elliptic PDE. In order to derive a problem which is amenable to computation the perimeter functional is relaxed using a gradient energy functional together with an obstacle potential in which there is an interface parameter epsilon. This phase field approach is justified by proving Gamma-convergence to the functional with perimeter regularisation as epsilon tends to zero. The computational approach is based on a finite element approximation. This discretisation is shown to converge in an appropriate way to the solution of the phase field problem. We derive an iterative method which is shown to yield an energy decreasing sequence converging to a discrete critical point. The efficacy of the approach is illustrated with numerical experiments.

math.NA↗
arXiv2015

On some linear parabolic PDEs on moving hypersurfaces

We consider existence and uniqueness for several examples of linear parabolic equations formulated on moving hypersurfaces. Specifically, we study in turn a surface heat equation, an equation posed on a bulk domain, a novel coupled bulk-surface system and an equation with a dynamic boundary condition. In order to prove the well-posedness, we make use of an abstract framework presented in a recent work by the authors which dealt with the formulation and well-posedness of linear parabolic equations on arbitrary evolving Hilbert spaces. Here, after recalling all of the necessary concepts and theorems, we show that the abstract framework can applied to the case of evolving (or moving) hypersurfaces, and then we demonstrate the utility of the framework to the aforementioned problems.

math.AP↗
arXiv2015

A Stefan problem on an evolving surface

We formulate a Stefan problem on an evolving hypersurface and study the well-posedness of weak solutions given $L^1$ data. To do this, we first develop function spaces and results to handle equations on evolving surfaces in order to give a natural treatment of the problem. Then we consider the existence of solutions for $L^\infty$ data; this is done by regularisation of the nonlinearity. The regularised problem is solved by a fixed point theorem and then uniform estimates are obtained in order to pass to the limit. By using a duality method we show continuous dependence which allows us to extend the results to $L^1$ data.

math.AP↗
arXiv2015

An abstract framework for parabolic PDEs on evolving spaces

We present an abstract framework for treating the theory of well-posedness of solutions to abstract parabolic partial differential equations on evolving Hilbert spaces. This theory is applicable to variational formulations of PDEs on evolving spatial domains including moving hypersurfaces. We formulate an appropriate time derivative on evolving spaces called the material derivative and define a weak material derivative in analogy with the usual time derivative in fixed domain problems; our setting is abstract and not restricted to evolving domains or surfaces. Then we show well-posedness to a certain class of parabolic PDEs under some assumptions on the parabolic operator and the data.

math.AP↗
arXiv2015

A computational approach to an optimal partition problem on surfaces

We explore an optimal partition problem on surfaces using a computational approach. The problem is to minimise the sum of the first Dirichlet Laplace--Beltrami operator eigenvalues over a given number of partitions of a surface. We consider a method based on eigenfunction segregation and perform calculations using modern high performance computing techniques. We first test the accuracy of the method in the case of three partitions on the sphere then explore the problem for higher numbers of partitions and on other surfaces.

math.AP↗
arXiv2014

Error analysis for an ALE evolving surface finite element method

We consider an arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian evolving surface finite element method for the numerical approximation of advection and diffusion of a conserved scalar quantity on a moving surface. We describe the method, prove optimal order error bounds and present numerical simulations that agree with the theoretical results.

math.NA↗
arXiv2014

Evolving surface finite element method for the Cahn-Hilliard equation

We use the evolving surface finite element method to solve a Cahn- Hilliard equation on an evolving surface with prescribed velocity. We start by deriving the equation using a conservation law and appropriate transport for- mulae and provide the necessary functional analytic setting. The finite element method relies on evolving an initial triangulation by moving the nodes accord- ing to the prescribed velocity. We go on to show a rigorous well-posedness result for the continuous equations by showing convergence, along a subse- quence, of the finite element scheme. We conclude the paper by deriving error estimates and present various numerical examples.

math.NA↗
arXiv2014

Unfitted finite element methods using bulk meshes for surface partial differential equations

In this paper, we define new unfitted finite element methods for numerically approximating the solution of surface partial differential equations using bulk finite elements. The key idea is that the $n$-dimensional hypersurface, $Γ\subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$, is embedded in a polyhedral domain in $\mathbb R^{n+1}$ consisting of a union, $\mathcal{T}_h$, of $(n+1)$-simplices. The finite element approximating space is based on continuous piece-wise linear finite element functions on $\mathcal{T}_h$. Our first method is a sharp interface method, \emph{SIF}, which uses the bulk finite element space in an approximating weak formulation obtained from integration on a polygonal approximation, $Γ_{h}$, of $Γ$. The full gradient is used rather than the projected tangential gradient and it is this which distinguishes \emph{SIF} from the method of [42]. The second method, \emph{NBM}, is a narrow band method in which the region of integration is a narrow band of width $O(h)$. \emph{NBM} is similar to the method of [13]. but again the full gradient is used in the discrete weak formulation. The a priori error analysis in this paper shows that the methods are of optimal order in the surface $L^{2}$ and $H^{1}$ norms and have the advantage that the normal derivative of the discrete solution is small and converges to zero. Our third method combines bulk finite elements, discrete sharp interfaces and narrow bands in order to give an unfitted finite element method for parabolic equations on evolving surfaces. We show that our method is conservative so that it preserves mass in the case of an advection diffusion conservation law. Numerical results are given which illustrate the rates of convergence.

math.NA↗
arXiv2013

Phase field methods for binary recovery

We consider the inverse problem of recovering a binary function from blurred and noisy data. Such problems arise in many applications, for example image processing and optimal control of PDEs. Our formulation is based on the Mumford-Shah model, but with a phase field approximation to the perimeter regularisation. We use a double obstacle potential as well as a smooth double well potential. We introduce an iterative method for solving the problem, develop a suitable discretisation of this iterative method, and prove some convergence results. Numerical simulations are presented which illustrate the usefulness of the approach and the relative merits of the phase field models.

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