<p>Problems in stochastic homogenization theory typically deal with approximating differential operators with rapidly oscillatory random coefficients by operators with homogenized deterministic coefficients. Even though the convergence of these operators in multiple scales is well-studied in the existing literature in the form of a Law of Large Numbers, very little is known about their rate of convergence or their large deviations.</p><p>In the first part of this thesis, we we establish analytic results for the Gaussian correction in homogenization of an elliptic differential equation with random diffusion in randomly layered media. We also derive a Central Limit Theorem for a diffusion in a weakly random media.</p><p>In the second part of this thesis devise a technique for obtaining large deviation results for homogenization problems in random media. We consider the special cases of an elliptic equation with random potential, the random diffusion problem in randomly layered media and a reaction-diffusion equation with highly oscillatory reaction term.</p> / Dissertation

We consider mathematical modeling of thin film flow between two rough surfaces which are in relative motion. For example such flows take place in different kinds of bearings and gears when a lubricant is used to reduce friction and wear between the surfaces. The mathematical foundations of lubrication theory is given by the Navier--Stokes equation, which describes the motion of viscous fluids. In thin domains several approximations are possible which lead to the so called Reynolds equation. This equation is crucial to describe the pressure in the lubricant film. When the pressure is found it is possible to predict vorous important physical quantities such as friction (stresses on the bounding surfaces), load carrying capacity and velocity field. In hydrodynamic lubrication the effect of surface roughness is not negligible, because in practical situations the amplitude of the surface roughness are of the same order as the film thickness. Moreover, a perfectly smooth surface does not exist in reality due to imperfections in the manufacturing process. Therefore, any realistic lubrication model should account for the effects of surface roughness. This implies that the mathematical modeling leads to partial differential equations with coefficients that will oscillate rapidly in space and time. A direct numerical computation is therefore very difficult, since an extremely dense mesh is needed to resolve the oscillations due to the surface roughness. A natural approach is to do some type of averaging. In this PhD thesis we use and develop modern homogenization theory to be able to handle the questions above. Especially, we use, develop and apply the method based on the multiple scale expansions and two-scale convergence. The thesis is based on five papers (A-E), with an appendix to paper A, and an extensive introduction, which puts these publications in a larger context. In Paper A the connection between the Stokes equation and the Reynolds equation is investigated. More precisely, the asymptotic behavior as both the film thickness <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?%5Cepsilon" /> and wavelength <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?%5Cmu" /> of the roughness tend to zero is analyzed and described. Three different limit equations are derived. Time-dependent equations of Reynolds type are obtained in all three cases (Stokes roughness, Reynolds roughness and high frequency roughness regime). In paper C we extend the work done in Paper A where we compare the roughness regimes by numeric computations for the stationary case. In paper B we present a mathematical model that takes into account cavitation, surfaces roughness and compressibility of the fluid. We compute the homogenized coefficients in the case of unidirectional roughness.In the paper D we derive a mathematical model of thin film flow between two close rough surfaces, which takes into account cavitation, surface roughness and pressure dependent density. Moreover, we use two-scale convergence to homogenize the model. Finally, in paper E we prove the existence of solutions to a frequently used mathematical model of thin film flow, which takes cavitation into account.

In this thesis we study a parameter identification problem for a stationary diffusion equation posed in heterogeneous media. This problem is closely related to the Calderón problem with anisotropic conductivities. The anisotropic case is particularly difficult and is ill-posed both in regards to uniqueness of solution and stability on the data. Since the present problem is posed in heterogeneous media, we can take advantage of multiscale modelling and the tools of homogenization theory in the study of the inverse problem, unlike the original Calderón problem. We investigate the possibilities of combining the theory of the Calderón problem with homogenization theory in order to obtain a well-posed parameter identification. We find that homogenization theory indeed can be used to make progress towards a well-posed identification of the diffusion coefficient. The success of the method is, however, dependent both on the precise structure of the heterogeneous media and on the modelling of the measurements in the invese problem framework. We have in mind a particular problem formulation which is motivated by an experiment to determine effective coefficients of materials used in food packaging. This experiment comes with a set of requirements on both the heterogeneous media and on the method for making measurements that, unfortunately, are in conflict with the currently available results for well-posedness. We study also an optimization approach to solving the inverse problem under these application specific requirements. Some progress towards well-posedness of the optimization problem is made by proving existence of minimizer, again with homogenization theory playing a key role in obtaining the result. In a proof-of-concept computational study this optimization approach is implemented and compared to two other optimization problems. For the two tested heterogeneous media, the only optimization method that manages to identify reasonably well the diffusion coefficient is the one which makes use of homogenization theory.

We use Darcy's law and conservation of mass to model the flow of a fluid through a porous medium. It is a second order elliptic system with a heterogeneous coefficient. We consider the equations written in mixed form. In the heterogeneous case, we define a new multiscale mortar space that incorporates purely local information from homogenization theory to better approximate the solution along the interfaces with just a few degrees of freedom. In the case of a locally periodic heterogeneous coefficient of period epsilon, we prove that the new method achieves both optimal order error estimates in the discretization parameters and good approximation when epsilon is small. Moreover, we present numerical examples to assess its performance when the coefficient is not obviously locally periodic. We show that the new mortar method works well, and better than polynomial mortar spaces. On the other hand, we also propose to use multiscale mortars as a coarse component to construct a two-level preconditioner for the saddle point linear system arising from the fine scale discretization of the mixed finite element system. The two-level preconditioners are constructed based on the interfaces. We propose a framework to define the interpolation operators for the face based two-level preconditioners for different combination of coarse and fine scale mortar spaces for matching and nonmatching grids. In this dissertation, we show that for quasi-homogeneous problems and matching grids, the condition number of the preconditioned interface operator is bounded by (log(H/h))², which is the same as the traditional two-level preconditioners, for quasi-homogeneous problems. We show several numerical examples to demonstrate that for the strongly heterogeneous porous media, it is often desirable and even necessary to use a higher dimensional coarse mortar space to construct the coarse preconditioner to achieve convergence. We apply our ideas to study slightly compressible single phase and two-phase flow in a porous medium. We find that for the nonlinear single phase problem, the two-level preconditioners could be successfully applied to the symmetrized linear system. For the two-phase problem, using the fine scale, instead of multiscale, velocity solutions from the flow problem can greatly benefit the transport problem. / text

This thesis is devoted to the study of some homogenization problems with applications in lubrication theory. It consists of an introduction, five research papers (I–V) and a complementary appendix.Homogenization is a mathematical theory for studying differential equations with rapidly oscillating coefficients. Many important problems in physics with one or several microscopic scales give rise to this kind of equations, whence the need for methods that enable an efficient treatment of such problems. To this end several mathematical techniques have been devised. The main homogenization method used in this thesis is called multiscale convergence. It is a notion of weak convergence in &nbsp;Lp&nbsp;spaces which is designed to take oscillations into account. In paper II we extend some previously obtained results in multiscale convergence that enable us to homogenize a nonlinear problem with a finite number of microscopic scales. The main idea in the proof is closely related to a decomposition of vector fields due to Hermann Weyl. The Weyl decomposition is further explored in paper III.Lubrication theory is devoted to the study of fluid flows in thin domains. More generally, tribology is the science of bodies in relative motion interacting through a mechanical contact. An important aspect of tribology is to explain the principles of friction, lubrication and wear. The mathematical foundations of lubrication theory are given by the Navier–Stokes equation which describes the motion of a viscous fluid. In thin domains several simplifications are possible, as shown in the introduction of this thesis. The resulting equation is named after Osborne Reynolds and is much simpler to analyze than the Navier--Stokes equation.The Reynolds equation is widely used by engineers today. For extremely thin films, it is well-known that the surface micro-topography is an important factor in hydrodynamic performance. Hence it is important to understand the influence of surface roughness with small characteristic wavelengths upon the solution of the Reynolds equation. Since the 1980s such problems have been increasingly studied by homogenization theory. The idea is to replace the original equation with a homogenized equation where the roughness effects are “averaged out”. One problem consists of finding an algorithm for computing the solution of the homogenized equation. Another problem consists of showing, on introducing the appropriate mathematical definitions, that the homogenized equation is the correct method of averaging. Papers I, II, IV and V investigate the effects of surface roughness by homogenization techniques in various situations of hydrodynamic lubrication. To compare the homogenized solution with the solution of the deterministic Reynolds equation, some numerical examples are also included. / Godkänd; 2011; 20110408 (johfab); DISPUTATION Ämnesområde: Matematik/Mathematics Opponent: Professor Guy Bayada, Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon (INSA-LYON), Lyon, France, Ordförande: Professor Lars-Erik Persson, Institutionen för teknikvetenskap och matematik, Luleå tekniska universitet Tid: Tisdag den 7 juni 2011, kl 10.00 Plats: D2214/15, Luleå tekniska universitet

<p>A thermodynamically consistent coarsed-grained phase field model was developed to find the conditions under which a heterogeneous porous electrode can be treated as homogeneous in the description of Lithium-ions in rechargeable batteries. Four regimes of behavior under which the transport phenomena can be homogenized to describe porous LIBs were identied: regime (a), where the model is inaccurate, for physically accessible particle packings of aspect ratios smaller than c/a = 0.5 and electrode porosities between 0.34 to 0.45; regime (b), where the model is valid, for particles of aspect ratios greater than c/a = 0.7 and electrode porosities greater than 0.35; regime (c), where the model is valid, but the microstructures are physically inaccessible, and correspond to particles with aspect ratios greater than c/a = 0.7 and electrode porosities smaller than 0.34; and regime (d), where the model is invalid and the porous microstructures are physically inaccessible, and correspond to particles with aspect ratios smaller than c/a = 1 and electrode porosities smaller than 0.34.</p> <p>The developed formulation was applied to the graphite | LixNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2 system to analyze the effect of microstructure and coarsed-grained long-range chemomechanical effects on the electrochemical behavior. Specically, quantiable lithium distribution populations in the cathode, as a result of long range interactions of the diffuse interface, charge effects and mechanical stresses were identified: i) diffusion limited population due to negligible composition gradients, ii) stress-induced population as a result of chemically induced stresses, and iii) lithiation-induced population, as a consequence of the electrochemical potential gradients.</p>

The focus of this thesis is the theory of periodic homogenization of partial differential equations and some applicable concepts of convergence. More precisely, we study parabolic problems exhibiting both spatial and temporal microscopic oscillations and a vanishing volumetric heat capacity type of coefficient. We also consider a hyperbolic-parabolic problem with two spatial microscopic scales. The tools used are evolution settings of multiscale and very weak multiscale convergence, which are extensions of, or closely related to, the classical method of two-scale convergence. The novelty of the research in the thesis is the homogenization results and, for the studied parabolic problems, adapted compactness results of multiscale convergence type.

The main focus of the present thesis is on the homogenization of some selected elliptic and parabolic problems. More precisely, we homogenize: non-periodic linear elliptic problems in two dimensions exhibiting a homothetic scaling property; two types of evolution-multiscale linear parabolic problems, one having two spatial and two temporal microscopic scales where the latter ones are given in terms of a two-parameter family, and one having two spatial and three temporal microscopic scales that are fixed power functions; and, finally, evolution-multiscale monotone parabolic problems with one spatial and an arbitrary number of temporal microscopic scales that are not restricted to be given in terms of power functions. In order to achieve homogenization results for these problems we study and enrich the theory of two-scale convergence and its kins. In particular the concept of very weak two-scale convergence and generalizations is developed, and we study an application of this convergence mode where it is employed to detect scales of heterogeneity. / Huvudsakligt fokus i avhandlingen ligger på homogeniseringen av vissa elliptiska och paraboliska problem. Mer precist så homogeniserar vi: ickeperiodiska linjära elliptiska problem i två dimensioner med homotetisk skalning; två typer av evolutionsmultiskaliga linjära paraboliska problem, en med två mikroskopiska skalor i både rum och tid där de senare ges i form av en tvåparameterfamilj, och en med två mikroskopiska skalor i rum och tre i tid som ges i form av fixa potensfunktioner; samt, slutligen, evolutionsmultiskaliga monotona paraboliska problem med en mikroskopisk skala i rum och ett godtyckligt antal i tid som inte är begränsade till att vara givna i form av potensfunktioner. För att kunna uppnå homogeniseringsresultat för dessa problem så studerar och utvecklar vi teorin för tvåskalekonvergens och besläktade begrepp. Speciellt så utvecklar vi begreppet mycket svag tvåskalekonvergens med generaliseringar, och vi studerar en tillämpningav denna konvergenstyp där den används för att detektera förekomsten av heterogenitetsskalor.