A free boundary problem describing migration into rubbers -- quest of the large time behavior

Abstract

In many industrial applications, rubber-based materials are routinely used in conjunction with various penetrants or diluents in gaseous or liquid form. It is of interest to estimate theoretically the penetration depth as well as the amount of diffusants stored inside the material. In this framework, we prove the global solvability and explore the large time-behavior of solutions to a one-phase free boundary problem with nonlinear kinetic condition that is able to describe the migration of diffusants into rubber. The key idea in the proof of the large time behavior is to benefit of a contradiction argument, since it is difficult to obtain uniform estimates for the growth rate of the free boundary due to the use of a Robin boundary condition posed at the fixed boundary.

Error estimates for semi-discrete finite element approximations for a moving boundary problem capturing the penetration of diffusants into rubber

“…We set w k := R k u, where R k u is the Lagrange interpolation of u. By using Lemma 3.1, Young's inequality (12) and interpolation inequality (13), we obtain the following estimates:…”

“…For details on the proof, see for instance page 3 in [17] and page 61 in [29]. To show (iii), we use the interpolation inequality (13) together with (i) and (ii), we obtain…”

“…e.g. [2,13,23]), to controlling phase transitions like melting and freezing or solid-solid changes in concrete (cf. e.g.…”