The General Theory Of Homogenization

Homogenization is not about periodicity, or Gamma-convergence, but about understanding which effective equations to use at macroscopic level, knowing which partial differential equations govern mesoscopic levels, without using probabilities (which destroy physical reality); instead, one uses various topologies of weak type, the G-convergence of Sergio Spagnolo, the H-convergence of François Murat and the author, and some responsible for the appearance of nonlocal effects, which many theories in continuum mechanics or physics guessed wrongly. For a better understanding of 20th century science, new mathematical tools must be introduced, like the author’s H-measures, variants by Patrick Gérard, and others yet to be discovered.

Composite materials are widely used in industry: well-known examples of this are the superconducting multi-filamentary composites which are used in the composition of optical fibres. Such materials are complicated to model, as different points in the material will have different properties. The mathematical theory of homogenization is designed to deal with this problem, and hence is used to model the behaviour of these important materials. This book provides a self-contained and authoritative introduction to the subject for graduates and researchers in the field.

This monograph surveys the theory of quantitative homogenization for second-order linear elliptic systems in divergence form with rapidly oscillating periodic coefficients in a bounded domain. It begins with a review of the classical qualitative homogenization theory, and addresses the problem of convergence rates of solutions. The main body of the monograph investigates various interior and boundary regularity estimates that are uniform in the small parameter e>0. Additional topics include convergence rates for Dirichlet eigenvalues and asymptotic expansions of fundamental solutions, Green functions, and Neumann functions. The monograph is intended for advanced graduate students and researchers in the general areas of analysis and partial differential equations. It provides the reader with a clear and concise exposition of an important and currently active area of quantitative homogenization.

In many physical problems several scales present either in space or in time, caused by either inhomogeneity of the medium or complexity of the mechanical process. A fundamental approach is to first construct micro-scale models, and then deduce the macro-scale laws and the constitutive relations by properly averaging over the micro-scale. The perturbation method of multiple scales can be used to derive averaged equations for a much larger scale from considerations of the small scales. In the mechanics of multiscale media, the analytical scheme of upscaling is known as the Theory of Homogenization The authors share the view that the general methods of homogenization should be more widely understood and practiced by applied scientists and engineers. Hence this book is aimed at providing a less abstract treatment of the theory of homogenization for treating inhomogeneous media, and at illustrating its broad range of applications. Each chapter deals with a different class of physical problems. To tackle a new problem, the novel approach of first discussing the physically relevant scales, then identifying the small parameters and their roles in the normalized governing equations is adopted. The details of asymptotic analysis are only explained afterwards.

The book provides a pedagogic and comprehensive introduction to homogenization theory with a special focus on problems set for non-periodic media. The presentation encompasses both deterministic and probabilistic settings. It also mixes the most abstract aspects with some more practical aspects regarding the numerical approaches necessary to simulate such multiscale problems. Based on lecture courses of the authors, the book is suitable for graduate students of mathematics and engineering.

Various applications of the homogenization theory of partial differential equations resulted in the further development of this branch of mathematics, attracting an increasing interest of both mathematicians and experts in other fields. In general, the theory deals with the following: Let Ak be a sequence of differential operators, linear or nonlinepr. We want to examine the asymptotic behaviour of solutions uk to the equation Auk = f, as k ~ =, provided coefficients of Ak contain rapid oscillations. This is the case, e. g. when the coefficients are of the form a(e/x), where the function a(y) is periodic and ek ~ 0 ask~=. Of course, of oscillation, like almost periodic or random homogeneous, are of many other kinds interest as well. It seems a good idea to find a differential operator A such that uk ~ u, where u is a solution of the limit equation Au = f Such a limit operator is usually called the homogenized operator for the sequence Ak . Sometimes, the term "averaged" is used instead of "homogenized". Let us look more closely what kind of convergence one can expect for uk. Usually, we have some a priori bound for the solutions. However, due to the rapid oscillations of the coefficients, such a bound may be uniform with respect to k in the corresponding energy norm only. Therefore, we may have convergence of solutions only in the weak topology of the energy space.

The behavior of materials at the nanoscale is a key aspect of modern nanoscience and nanotechnology. This book presents rigorous mathematical techniques showing that some very useful phenomenological properties which can be observed at the nanoscale in many nonlinear reaction-diffusion processes can be simulated and justified mathematically by means of homogenization processes when a certain critical scale is used in the corresponding framework.

The origins of the harmonic analysis go back to an ingenious idea of Fourier that any reasonable function can be represented as an infinite linear combination of sines and cosines. Today's harmonic analysis incorporates the elements of geometric measure theory, number theory, probability, and has countless applications from data analysis to image recognition and from the study of sound and vibrations to the cutting edge of contemporary physics. The present volume is based on lectures presented at the summer school on Harmonic Analysis. These notes give fresh, concise, and high-level introductions to recent developments in the field, often with new arguments not found elsewhere. The volume will be of use both to graduate students seeking to enter the field and to senior researchers wishing to keep up with current developments.