Christiane Kraus’s research while affiliated with Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics and other places

We investigate the sharp-interface limit for the Navier–Stokes–Korteweg model, which is an extension of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations. By means of compactness arguments, we show that solutions of the Navier–Stokes–Korteweg equations converge to solutions of a physically meaningful free-boundary problem. Assuming that an associated energy functional converges in a suitable sense, we obtain the sharp-interface limit at the level of weak solutions.

For the two-phase incompressible Navier--Stokes equations with surface tension, we derive an appropriate weak formulation incorporating a variational formulation using divergence-free test functions. We prove a consistency result to justify our definition and, under reasonable regularity assumptions, we reconstruct the pressure function from the weak formulation.

In this paper we study a model for phase separation and damage in thermoviscoelastic materials. The main novelty of the paper consists in the fact that, in contrast with previous works in the literature (cf., e.g., [C. Heinemann, C. Kraus: Existence results of weak solutions for Cahn-Hilliard systems coupled with elasticity and damage. Adv. Math. Sci. Appl. 21 (2011), 321--359] and [C. Heinemann, C. Kraus: Existence results for diffuse interface models describing phase separation and damage. European J. Appl. Math. 24 (2013), 179--211]), we encompass in the model thermal processes, nonlinearly coupled with the damage, concentration and displacement evolutions. More in particular, we prove the existence of "entropic weak solutions", resorting to a solvability concept first introduced in [E. Feireisl: Mathematical theory of compressible, viscous, and heat conducting fluids. Comput. Math. Appl. 53 (2007), 461--490] in the framework of Fourier-Navier-Stokes systems and then recently employed in [E. Feireisl, H. Petzeltov\'a, E. Rocca: Existence of solutions to a phase transition model with microscopic movements. Math. Methods Appl. Sci. 32 (2009), 1345--1369], [E. Rocca, R. Rossi: "Entropic" solutions to a thermodynamically consistent PDE system for phase transitions and damage. SIAM J. Math. Anal., 47 (2015), 2519--2586] for the study of PDE systems for phase transition and damage. Our global-in-time existence result is obtained by passing to the limit in a carefully devised time-discretization scheme.

We present a continuum model that incorporates rate-dependent damage and fracture, a material order-parameter field and temperature within a phase-field approach. The models covers partial damage as well as the formation of macro-cracks. For the material order parameter we assume a Cahn Larché-type dynamics, which makes the model in particular applicable to binary alloys. We give thermodynamically consistent evolution equations resulting from a unified variational approach. Diverse coupling mechanisms can be covered within the model, such as heat dissipation, thermal-expansion-induced failure and crack deflection due to inhomogeneities. With help of an adaptive finite element code we conduct numerical experiments of different complexity in order to study the possibilities and limitations of the presented model. We furthermore include anisotropic linear elasticity in our model and investigate the effect on the crack pattern.

In this paper, we consider a coupled PDE system describing phase separation and damage phenomena in elastically stressed alloys in the presence of inertial effects. The material is considered on a bounded Lipschitz domain with mixed boundary conditions for the displacement variable. The main aim of this work is to establish existence of weak solutions for the introduced hyperbolic-parabolic system. To this end, we first adopt the notion of weak solutions introduced in [HK11]. Then we prove existence of weak solutions by means of regularization, time-discretization and different variational techniques.

In this work, we analytically investigate a degenerating PDE system for phase separation and complete damage processes considered on a nonsmooth time-dependent domain with mixed boundary conditions. The evolution of the system is described by a degenerating Cahn–Hilliard equation for the concentration, a doubly nonlinear differential inclusion for the damage variable and a degenerating quasi-static balance equation for the displacement field. All these equations are highly nonlinearly coupled. Because of the doubly degenerating character of the system, the doubly nonlinear differential inclusion and the nonsmooth domain, the structure of the model is very complex from an analytical point of view.A novel approach is introduced for proving existence of weak solutions for such degenerating coupled system. To this end, we first establish a suitable notion of weak solutions, which consists of weak formulations of the diffusion and the momentum balance equation, a variational inequality for the damage process and a total energy inequality. To show existence of weak solutions, several new ideas come into play. Various results on shrinking sets and its corresponding local Sobolev spaces are used. It turns out that, for instance, on open sets which shrink in time a quite satisfying analysis in Sobolev spaces is possible. The presented analysis can handle highly nonsmooth regions where complete damage takes place. To mention only one difficulty, infinitely many completely damaged regions which are not connected with the Dirichlet boundary may occur in arbitrary small time intervals.

The aim of this paper is to prove existence of weak solutions of hyperbolic-parabolic evolution inclusions defined on Lipschitz domains with mixed boundary conditions describing, for instance, damage processes and elasticity with inertia terms. To this end, a suitable weak formulation to deal with such evolution inclusions in a non-smooth setting is presented. Then, existence of weak solutions is proven by utilizing time-discretization, $H^2$-regularization of the displacement variable and variational techniques from [HK11] to recover the subgradients after the limit passages.

A novel thermodynamically consistent diffuse interface model is derived for compressible electrolytes with phase transitions. The fluid mixtures may consist of N constituents with the phases liquid and vapor, where both phases may coexist. In addition, all constituents may consist of polarizable and magnetizable matter. Our introduced thermodynamically consistent diffuse interface model may be regarded as a generalized model of Allen-Cahn/Navier-Stokes/Poisson type for multi-component flows with phase transitions and electrochemical reactions. For the introduced diffuse interface model, we investigate physically admissible sharp interface limits by matched asymptotic techniques. We consider two scaling regimes, i.e. a non-coupled and a coupled regime, where the coupling takes place between the smallness parameter in the Poisson equation and the width of the interface. We recover in the sharp interface limit a generalized Allen-Cahn/Euler/Poisson system for mixtures with electrochemical reactions in the bulk phases equipped with admissible interfacial conditions. The interfacial conditions satisfy, for instance, a generalized Gibbs-Thomson law and a dynamic Young-Laplace law.

We introduce a new thermodynamically consistent diffuse interface model of Allen–Cahn/Navier–Stokes type for multi-component flows with phase transitions and chemical reactions. For the introduced diffuse interface model, we investigate physically admissible sharp interface limits by matched asymptotic techniques. We consider two scaling regimes, i.e. a non-dissipative and a dissipative regime, where we recover in the sharp interface limit a generalized Allen-Cahn/Euler system for mixtures with chemical reactions in the bulk phases equipped with admissible interfacial conditions. The interfacial conditions satify, for instance, a Young–Laplace and a Stefan type law.

The authors explore a unifying model which couples phase separation and damage processes in a system of partial differential equations. The model has technological applications to solder materials where interactions of both phenomena have been observed and cannot be neglected for a realistic description. The equations are derived in a thermodynamically consistent framework and suitable weak formulations for various types of this coupled system are presented. In the main part, existence of weak solutions is proven and degenerate limits are investigated.