Singular Perturbations

Singular perturbations occur when a small coefficient affects the highest order derivatives in a system of partial differential equations. From the physical point of view singular perturbations generate in the system under consideration thin layers located often but not always at the boundary of the domains that are called boundary layers or internal layers if the layer is located inside the domain. Important physical phenomena occur in boundary layers. The most common boundary layers appear in fluid mechanics, e.g., the flow of air around an airfoil or a whole airplane, or the flow of air around a car. Also in many instances in geophysical fluid mechanics, like the interface of air and earth, or air and ocean. This self-contained monograph is devoted to the study of certain classes of singular perturbation problems mostly related to thermic, fluid mechanics and optics and where mostly elliptic or parabolic equations in a bounded domain are considered. This book is a fairly unique resource regarding the rigorous mathematical treatment of boundary layer problems. The explicit methodology developed in this book extends in many different directions the concept of correctors initially introduced by J. L. Lions, and in particular the lower- and higher-order error estimates of asymptotic expansions are obtained in the setting of functional analysis. The review of differential geometry and treatment of boundary layers in a curved domain is an additional strength of this book. In the context of fluid mechanics, the outstanding open problem of the vanishing viscosity limit of the Navier-Stokes equations is investigated in this book and solved for a number of particular, but physically relevant cases. This book will serve as a unique resource for those studying singular perturbations and boundary layer problems at the advanced graduate level in mathematics or applied mathematics and may be useful for practitioners in other related fields in science and engineering such as aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, geophysical fluid mechanics, acoustics and optics.

Contains well-chosen examples and exercises A student-friendly introduction that follows a workbook type approach

This book results from various lectures given in recent years. Early drafts were used for several single semester courses on singular perturbation meth ods given at Rensselaer, and a more complete version was used for a one year course at the Technische Universitat Wien. Some portions have been used for short lecture series at Universidad Central de Venezuela, West Vir ginia University, the University of Southern California, the University of California at Davis, East China Normal University, the University of Texas at Arlington, Universita di Padova, and the University of New Hampshire, among other places. As a result, I've obtained lots of valuable feedback from students and listeners, for which I am grateful. This writing continues a pattern. Earlier lectures at Bell Laboratories, at the University of Edin burgh and New York University, and at the Australian National University led to my earlier works (1968, 1974, and 1978). All seem to have been useful for the study of singular perturbations, and I hope the same will be true of this monograph. I've personally learned much from reading and analyzing the works of others, so I would especially encourage readers to treat this book as an introduction to a diverse and exciting literature. The topic coverage selected is personal and reflects my current opin ions. An attempt has been made to encourage a consistent method of ap proaching problems, largely through correcting outer limits in regions of rapid change. Formal proofs of correctness are not emphasized.

The topic of this book is the study of singular perturbations of ordinary differential equations, i.e., perturbations that represent solutions as asymptotic series rather than as analytic functions in a perturbation parameter. The main method used is the so-called WKB (Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin) method, originally invented for the study of quantum-mechanical systems. The authors describe in detail the WKB method and its applications to the study of monodromy problems for Fuchsian differential equations and to the analysis of Painleve functions. This volume is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in differential equations and special functions.

Many partial differential equations arising in practice are parameter-dependent problems that are of singularly perturbed type. Prominent examples include plate and shell models for small thickness in solid mechanics, convection-diffusion problems in fluid mechanics, and equations arising in semi-conductor device modelling. Common features of these problems are layers and, in the case of non-smooth geometries, corner singularities. Mesh design principles for the efficient approximation of both features by the hp-version of the finite element method (hp-FEM) are proposed in this volume. For a class of singularly perturbed problems on polygonal domains, robust exponential convergence of the hp-FEM based on these mesh design principles is established rigorously.

Asymptotic Analysis of Singular Perturbations

This volume provides a comprehensive review of multiple-scale dynamical systems. Mathematical models of such multiple-scale systems are considered singular perturbation problems, and this volume focuses on the geometric approach known as Geometric Singular Perturbation Theory (GSPT). It is the first of its kind that introduces the GSPT in a coordinate-independent manner. This is motivated by specific examples of biochemical reaction networks, electronic circuit and mechanic oscillator models and advection-reaction-diffusion models, all with an inherent non-uniform scale splitting, which identifies these examples as singular perturbation problems beyond the standard form. The contents cover a general framework for this GSPT beyond the standard form including canard theory, concrete applications, and instructive qualitative models. It contains many illustrations and key pointers to the existing literature. The target audience are senior undergraduates, graduate students and researchers interested in using the GSPT toolbox in nonlinear science, either from a theoretical or an application point of view. Martin Wechselberger is Professor at the School of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Sydney, Australia. He received the J.D. Crawford Prize in 2017 by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for achievements in the field of dynamical systems with multiple time-scales.

This book is aimed at researchers and students in physics, mathematics, and engineering. It contains the first systematic presentation of a general approach to the integration of singularly perturbed differential equations describing nonuniform transitions, such as the occurrence of a boundary layer, discontinuities, boundary effects and so on. The method of regularization of singular perturbations presented here can be applied to the asymptotic integration of systems of ordinary and partial differential equations.