arXiv subjects

Pierluigi Colli

Publications and source records attributed to Pierluigi Colli.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

A distributed control problem for a fractional tumor growth model

In this paper, the authors study the distributed optimal control of a system of three evolutionary equations involving fractional powers of three selfadjoint, monotone, unbounded linear operators having compact resolvents. The system is a generalization of a Cahn-Hilliard type phase field system modeling tumor growth that goes back to Hawkins-Daarud et al. (Int. J. Numer. Math. Biomed. Eng. 28 (2012), 3-24). The aim of the control process, which could be realized by either administering a drug or monitoring the nutrition, is to keep the tumor cell fraction under control while avoiding possible harm for the patient. In contrast to previous studies, in which the occurring unbounded operators governing the diffusional regimes were all given by the Laplacian with zero Neumann boundary conditions, the operators may in our case be different; more generally, we consider systems with fractional powers of the type that were studied in the recent work Adv. Math. Sci. Appl. 28 (2019), 343-375 (see arXiv:1906.10874), by the present authors. In the analysis, the Fréchet differentiability of the associated control-to-state operator is shown, by also establishing the existence of solutions to the associated adjoint system, and deriving the first-order necessary conditions of optimality for a cost functional of tracking type.

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arXiv2019

Well-posedness and regularity for a fractional tumor growth model

In this paper, we study a system of three evolutionary operator equations involving fractional powers of selfadjoint, monotone, unbounded, linear operators having compact resolvents. This system constitutes a generalization of a phase field system of Cahn-Hilliard type modelling tumor growth that has been proposed in Hawkins-Daarud et al. (Int. J. Numer. Math. Biomed. Eng. 28 (2012), 3-24) and investigated in recent papers co-authored by the present authors and E. Rocca. The model consists of a Cahn-Hilliard equation for the tumor cell fraction, coupled to a reaction-diffusion equation for a function S representing the nutrient-rich extracellular water volume fraction. Effects due to fluid motion are neglected. The generalization investigated in this paper is motivated by the possibility that the diffusional regimes governing the evolution of the different constituents of the model may be of different (e.g., fractional) type. Under rather general assumptions, well-posedness and regularity results are shown. In particular, by writing the equation governing the evolution of the chemical potential in the form of a general variational inequality, also singular or nonsmooth contributions of logarithmic or of double obstacle type to the energy density can be admitted.

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arXiv2019

On a coupled bulk-surface Allen-Cahn system with an affine linear transmission condition and its approximation by a Robin boundary condition

We study a coupled bulk-surface Allen-Cahn system with an affine linear transmission condition, that is, the trace values of the bulk variable and the values of the surface variable are connected via an affine relation, and this serves to generalize the usual dynamic boundary conditions. We tackle the problem of well-posedness via a penalization method using Robin boundary conditions. In particular, for the relaxation problem, the strong well-posedness and long-time behavior of solutions can be shown for more general and possibly nonlinear relations. New difficulties arise since the surface variable is no longer the trace of the bulk variable, and uniform estimates in the relaxation parameter are scarce. Nevertheless, weak convergence to the original problem can be shown. Using the approach of Colli and Fukao (Math. Models Appl. Sci. 2015), we show strong existence to the original problem with affine linear relations, and derive an error estimate between solutions to the relaxed and original problems.

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arXiv2019

Global existence for a phase separation system deduced from the entropy balance

This paper is concerned with a thermomechanical model describing phase separation phenomena in terms of the entropy balance and equilibrium equations for the microforces. The related system is highly nonlinear and admits singular potentials in the phase equation. Both the viscous and the non-viscous cases are considered in the Cahn--Hilliard relations characterizing the phase dynamics. The entropy balance is written in terms of the absolute temperature and of its logarithm, appearing under time derivative. The initial and boundary value problem is considered for the system of partial differential equations. The existence of a global solution is proved via some approximations involving Yosida regularizations and a suitable time discretization.

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arXiv2018

Deep quench approximation and optimal control of general Cahn-Hilliard systems with fractional operators and double obstacle potentials

The paper arXiv:1804.11290 contains well-posedness and regularity results for a system of evolutionary operator equations having the structure of a Cahn-Hilliard system. The operators appearing in the system equations were fractional versions in the spectral sense of general linear operators A and B having compact resolvents and are densely defined, unbounded, selfadjoint, and monotone in a Hilbert space of functions defined in a smooth domain. The associated double-well potentials driving the phase separation process modeled by the Cahn-Hilliard system could be of a very general type that includes standard physically meaningful cases such as polynomial, logarithmic, and double obstacle nonlinearities. In the subsequent paper arXiv:1807.03218, an analysis of distributed optimal control problems was performed for such evolutionary systems, where only the differentiable case of certain polynomial and logarithmic double-well potentials could be admitted. Results concerning existence of optimizers and first-order necessary optimality conditions were derived. In the present paper, we complement these results by studying a distributed control problem for such evolutionary systems in the case of nondifferentiable nonlinearities of double obstacle type. For such nonlinearities, it is well known that the standard constraint qualifications cannot be applied to construct appropriate Lagrange multipliers. To overcome this difficulty, we follow here the so-called "deep quench" method. We first give a general convergence analysis of the deep quench approximation that includes an error estimate and then demonstrate that its use leads in the double obstacle case to appropriate first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint state system.

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arXiv2018

Stabilization of a linearized Cahn-Hilliard system for phase separation by proportional boundary feedbacks

This work represents a first contribution on the problem of boundary stabilization for the phase field system of Cahn-Hilliard type, which models the phase separation in a binary mixture. The feedback controller we design here is with actuation only on the temperature flow of the system, on one part of the boundary only. Moreover, it is of proportional type, given in an explicit form, expressed only in terms of the eigenfunctions of the Laplace operator, being easy to manipulate from the computational point of view. Furthermore, it ensures that the closed loop nonlinear system exponentially reaches the prescribed stationary solution provided that the initial datum is close enough to it.

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arXiv2018

Time discretization of a nonlinear phase field system in general domains

This paper deals with the nonlinear phase field system \begin{equation*} \begin{cases} \partial_t (θ+\ell φ) - Δθ= f & \mbox{in}\ Ω\times(0, T), \\[1mm] \partial_t φ- Δφ+ ξ+ π(φ) = \ell θ,\ ξ\inβ(φ) & \mbox{in}\ Ω\times(0, T) \end{cases} \end{equation*} in a general domain $Ω\subseteq\mathbb{R}^N$. Here $N \in \mathbb{N}$, $T>0$, $\ell>0$, $f$ is a source term, $β$ is a maximal monotone graph and $π$ is a Lipschitz continuous function. We note that in the above system the nonlinearity $β+π$ replaces the derivative of a potential of double well type. Thus it turns out that the system is a generalization of the Caginalp phase field model and it has been studied by many authors in the case that $Ω$ is a bounded domain. However, for unbounded domains the analysis of the system seems to be at an early stage. In this paper we study the existence of solutions by employing a time discretization scheme and passing to the limit as the time step $h$ goes to $0$. In the limit procedure we face with the difficulty that the embedding $H^1(Ω) \hookrightarrow L^2(Ω)$ is not compact in the case of unbounded domains. Moreover, we can prove an interesting error estimate of order $h^{1/2}$ for the difference between continuous and discrete solutions.

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arXiv2018

Optimal distributed control of a generalized fractional Cahn-Hilliard system

In the recent paper `Well-posedness and regularity for a generalized fractional Cahn-Hilliard system' (arXiv:1804.11290) by the same authors, general well-posedness results have been established for a a class of evolutionary systems of two equations having the structure of a viscous Cahn-Hilliard system, in which nonlinearities of double-well type occur. The operators appearing in the system equations are fractional versions in the spectral sense of general linear operators A,B having compact resolvents, which are densely defined, unbounded, selfadjoint, and monotone in a Hilbert space of functions defined in a smooth domain. In this work we complement the results given in arXiv:1804.11290 by studying a distributed control problem for this evolutionary system. The main difficulty in the analysis is to establish a rigorous Frechet differentiability result for the associated control-to-state mapping. This seems only to be possible if the state stays bounded, which, in turn, makes it necessary to postulate an additional global boundedness assumption. One typical situation, in which this assumption is satisfied, arises when B is the negative Laplacian with zero Dirichlet boundary conditions and the nonlinearity is smooth with polynomial growth of at most order four. Also a case with logarithmic nonlinearity can be handled. Under the global boundedness assumption, we establish existence and first-order necessary optimality conditions for the optimal control problem in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint state system.

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arXiv2018

Optimal distributed control of a diffuse interface model of tumor growth

In this paper, a distributed optimal control problem is studied for a diffuse interface model of tumor growth which was proposed in [A. Hawkins-Daruud, K.G. van der Zee, J.T. Oden, Numerical simulation of a thermodynamically consistent four-species tumor growth model, Int. J. Numer. Math. Biomed. Engng. 28 (2011), 3-24]. The model consists of a Cahn-Hilliard equation for the tumor cell fraction coupled to a reaction-diffusion equation for a variable representing the nutrient-rich extracellular water volume fraction. The distributed control monitors as a right-hand side the reaction-diffusion equation and can be interpreted as a nutrient supply or a medication, while the cost function, which is of standard tracking type, is meant to keep the tumor cell fraction under control during the evolution. We show that the control-to-state operator is Frechet differentiable between appropriate Banach spaces and derive the first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality involving the adjoint state variables.

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arXiv2018

Well-posedness, regularity and asymptotic analyses for a fractional phase field system

This paper is concerned with a non-conserved phase field system of Caginalp type in which the main operators are fractional versions of two fixed linear operators $A$ and $B$. The operators $A$ and $B$ are supposed to be densely defined, unbounded, self-adjoint, monotone in the Hilbert space $L^2(Ω)$, for some bounded and smooth domain $Ω$, and have compact resolvents. Our definition of the fractional powers of operators uses the approach via spectral theory. A nonlinearity of double-well type occurs in the phase equation and either a regular or logarithmic potential, as well as a non-differentiable potential involving an indicator function, is admitted in our approach. We show general well-posedness and regularity results, extending the corresponding results that are known for the non-fractional elliptic operators with zero Neumann conditions or other boundary conditions like Dirichlet or Robin ones. Then, we investigate the longtime behavior of the system, by fully characterizing every element of the $ω$-limit as a stationary solution. In the final part of the paper we study the asymptotic behavior of the system as the parameter $σ$ appearing in the operator $B^{2σ}$ that plays in the phase equation decreasingly tends to zero. We can prove convergence to a phase relaxation problem at the limit, in which an additional term containing the projection of the phase variable on the kernel of $B$ appears.

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arXiv2018

Cahn-Hilliard equation on the boundary with bulk condition of Allen-Cahn type

The well-posedness for a system of partial differential equations and dynamic boundary conditions is discussed. This system is a sort of transmission problem between the dynamics in the bulk $Ω$ and on the boundary $Γ$. The Poisson equation for the chemical potential, the Allen-Cahn equation for the order parameter in the bulk $Ω$ are considered as auxiliary conditions for solving the Cahn-Hilliard equation on the boundary $Γ$. Recently the well-posedness for the equation and dynamic boundary condition, both of Cahn-Hilliard type, was discussed. Based on this result, the existence of the solution and its continuous dependence on the data are proved.

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arXiv2018

On the longtime behavior of a viscous Cahn-Hilliard system with convection and dynamic boundary conditions

In this paper, we study the longtime asymptotic behavior of a phase separation process occurring in a three-dimensional domain containing a fluid flow of given velocity. This process is modeled by a viscous convective Cahn-Hilliard system, which consists of two nonlinearly coupled second-order partial differential equations for the unknown quantities, the chemical potential and an order parameter representing the scaled density of one of the phases. In contrast to other contributions, in which zero Neumann boundary conditions were are assumed for both the chemical potential and the order parameter, we consider the case of dynamic boundary conditions, which model the situation when another phase transition takes place on the boundary. The phase transition processes in the bulk and on the boundary are driven by free energies functionals that may be nondifferentiable and have derivatives only in the sense of (possibly set-valued) subdifferentials. For the resulting initial-boundary value system of Cahn-Hilliard type, general well-posedness results have been established in a recent contribution by the same authors. In the present paper, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the solutions as times approaches infinity. More precisely, we study the $ω$-limit (in a suitable topology) of every solution trajectory. Under the assumptions that the viscosity coefficients are strictly positive and that at least one of the underlying free energies is differentiable, we prove that the $ω$-limit is meaningful and that all of its elements are solutions to the corresponding stationary system, where the component representing the chemical potential is a constant.

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arXiv2017

A doubly nonlinear Cahn-Hilliard system with nonlinear viscosity

In this paper we discuss a family of viscous Cahn-Hilliard equations with a non-smooth viscosity term. This system may be viewed as an approximation of a "forward-backward" parabolic equation. The resulting problem is highly nonlinear, coupling in the same equation two nonlinearities with the diffusion term. In particular, we prove existence of solutions for the related initial and boundary value problem. Under suitable assumptions, we also state uniqueness and continuous dependence on data.

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arXiv2017

Sliding mode control for a phase field system related to tumor growth

In the present contribution we study the sliding mode control (SMC) problem for a diffuse interface tumor growth model coupling a viscous Cahn-Hilliard type equation for the phase variable with a reaction-diffusion equation for the nutrient. First, we prove the well-posedness and some regularity results for the state system modified by the state-feedback control law. Then, we show that the chosen SMC law forces the system to reach within finite time the sliding manifold (that we chose in order that the tumor phase remains constant in time). The feedback control law is added in the Cahn-Hilliard type equation and leads the phase onto a prescribed target $ϕ^*$ in finite time.

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arXiv2017

Optimal velocity control of a convective Cahn-Hilliard system with double obstacles and dynamic boundary conditions: a `deep quench' approach

In this paper, we investigate a distributed optimal control problem for a convective viscous Cahn-Hilliard system with dynamic boundary conditions. Such systems govern phase separation processes between two phases taking place in an incompressible fluid in a container and, at the same time, on the container boundary. The cost functional is of standard tracking type, while the control is exerted by the velocity of the fluid in the bulk. In this way, the coupling between the state (given by the associated order parameter and chemical potential) and control variables in the governing system of nonlinear partial differential equations is bilinear, which presents a difficulty for the analysis. In contrast to the previous paper arXiv:1709.02335 [math.AP] by the same authors, the bulk and surface free energies are of double obstacle type, which renders the state constraint nondifferentiable. It is well known that for such cases standard constraint qualifications are not satisfied so that standard methods do not apply to yield the existence of Lagrange multipliers. In this paper, we overcome this difficulty by taking advantage of results established in the quoted paper for logarithmic nonlinearities, using a so-called `deep quench approximation'. We derive results concerning the existence of optimal controls and the first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint system.

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arXiv2017

Optimal boundary control of a nonstandard viscous Cahn-Hilliard system with dynamic boundary condition

In this paper, we study an optimal boundary control problem for a model for phase separation taking place in a spatial domain that was introduced by Podio-Guidugli in Ric. Mat. 55 (2006), pp. 105-118. The model consists of a strongly coupled system of nonlinear parabolic differential equations, in which products between the unknown functions and their time derivatives occur that are difficult to handle analytically. In contrast to the existing control literature about this PDE system, we consider here a dynamic boundary condition involving the Laplace-Beltrami operator for the order parameter of the system, which models an additional nonconserving phase transition occurring on the surface of the domain. We show the Fréchet differentiability of the associated control-to-state operator in appropriate Banach spaces and derive results on the existence of optimal controls and on first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality and the adjoint state system.

math.AP↗

arXiv2017

Optimal velocity control of a viscous Cahn-Hilliard system with convection and dynamic boundary conditions

In this paper, we investigate a distributed optimal control problem for a convective viscous Cahn-Hilliard system with dynamic boundary conditions. Such systems govern phase separation processes between two phases taking place in an incompressible fluid in a container and, at the same time, on the container boundary. The cost functional is of standard tracking type, while the control is exerted by the velocity of the fluid in the bulk. In this way, the coupling between the state (given by the associated order parameter and chemical potential) and control variables in the governing system of nonlinear partial differential equations is bilinear, which presents an additional difficulty for the analysis. The nonlinearities in the bulk and surface free energies are of logarithmic type, which entails that the thermodynamic forces driving the phase separation process may become singular. We show existence for the optimal control problem under investigation, prove the Fréchet differentiability of the associated control-to-state mapping in suitable Banach spaces and derive the first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality and the associated adjoint system. Due to the strong nonlinear couplings between state variables and control, the corresponding proofs require a considerable analytical effort.

math.AP↗

arXiv2017

Optimal boundary control of a nonstandard Cahn-Hilliard system with dynamic boundary condition and double obstacle inclusions

In this paper, we study an optimal boundary control problem for a model for phase separation taking place in a spatial domain that was introduced by P. Podio-Guidugli in Ric. Mat. 55 (2006), pp. 105-118. The model consists of a strongly coupled system of nonlinear parabolic differential inclusions, in which products between the unknown functions and their time derivatives occur that are difficult to handle analytically; the system is complemented by initial and boundary conditions. For the order parameter of the phase separation process, a dynamic boundary condition involving the Laplace-Beltrami operator is assumed, which models an additional nonconserving phase transition occurring on the surface of the domain. We complement in this paper results that were established in the recent contribution appeared in Evol. Equ. Control Theory 6 (2017), pp. 35-58, by the two authors and Gianni Gilardi. In contrast to that paper, in which differentiable potentials of logarithmic type were considered, we investigate here the (more difficult) case of nondifferentiable potentials of double obstacle type. For such nonlinearities, the standard techniques of optimal control theory to establish the existence of Lagrange multipliers for the state constraints are known to fail. To overcome these difficulties, we employ the following line of approach: we use the results contained in the preprint arXiv:1609.07046 [math.AP] for the case of (differentiable) logarithmic potentials and perform a so-called "deep quench limit". Using compactness and monotonicity arguments, it is shown that this strategy leads to the desired first-order necessary optimality conditions for the case of (nondifferentiable) double obstacle potentials.

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