In this dissertation, we study a free boundary problem obtained as a limit as [epsilon omplies 0] to the following regularizing family of semilinear equations [Delta]u = [Beta subscript epsilon](u)F([gradient]u), where [Beta subscript epsilon] approximates the Dirac delta in the origin and F is a Lipschitz function bounded away from 0 and infinity. The least supersolution approach is used to construct solutions satisfying geometric properties of the level surfaces that are uniform. This allows to prove that the free boundary of the limit has the "right" weak geometry, in the measure theoretical sense. By the construction of some barriers with curvature, the classification of global profiles for the blow-up analysis is carried out and the limit function is proven to be a viscosity and pointwise solution (a.e) to a free boundary problem. Finally, the free boundary is proven to be a C[superscript 1, alpha] surface around H[superscript n-1] a.e. point.

This thesis investigates the viability of two boundary element methods for solving steady state problems, the continuous least squares method and the Galerkin minimization technique. In conventional boundary element methods, the singularities of the fundamental solution involved are usually located at fixed points on the boundary of the problem's domain or on an auxiliary boundary. This leads to some difficulties: when the singularities are located on the problem domain's boundary, it is not easy to evaluate the solution for points on or near that boundary whereas if the singularities are placed on an auxiliary boundary, this auxiliary boundary would have to be carefully chosen. Hence the methods studied here allow the singularities, initially located at some auxiliary boundary, to move until the best positions are found. These positions are determined by attempting to minimize the error via the least squares or the Galerkin technique. This results in a highly accurate, adaptive, but nonlinear method. We study various methods for solving systems of nonlinear equations resulting from the Galerkin technique. A hybrid method has been implemented, which involves the objective function from the least squares method while the gradient is due to the Galerkin method. Numerical examples involving Laplace's equation in two dimensions are presented and results using the discrete least squares method, the continuous least squares method and the Galerkin method are compared and discussed. The continuous least squares method appears to give the best results for the sample problems tried. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

Very accurate methods, based on boundary integral techniques, are developed for the study of multiple, interacting fluid interfaces in an Eulerian fluid. These methods are applied to the evolution of a thin, periodic layer of constant vorticity embedded in irrotational fluid. Numerical regularity experiments are conducted and suggest that the interfaces of the layer develop a curvature singularity in infinite time. This is to be contrasted with the more singular vorticity distribution of a vortex sheet developing such a singularity in a finite time.

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Optimized Schwarz methods are iterative domain decomposition procedures with greatly improved convergence properties, for solving second order elliptic boundary value problems. The enhanced convergence is obtained by replacing the Dirichlet transmission conditions in the classical Schwarz iteration with more general conditions that are optimized for performance. The convergence is optimized through the solution of a min-max problem. The theoretical study of the min-max problems gives explicit formulas or characterizations for the optimized transmission conditions for practical use, and it permits the analysis of the asymptotic behavior of the convergence. / In the first part of this work, we continue the study of optimized transmission conditions for advection-diffusion problems with smooth coefficients. We derive asymptotic formulas for the optimized parameters for small mesh sizes, in the overlapping and non-overlapping cases, and show that these formulas are accurate when the component of the advection tangential to the interface is not too large. / In a second part, we consider a diffusion problem with a discontinuous coefficient and non-overlapping domain decompositions. We derive several choices of optimized transmission conditions by thoroughly solving the associated min-max problems. We show in particular that the convergence of optimized Schwarz methods improves as the jump in the coefficient increases, if an appropriate scaling of the transmission conditions is used. Moreover, we prove that optimized two-sided Robin conditions lead to mesh-independent convergence. Numerical experiments with two subdomains are presented to verify the analysis. We also report the results of experiments using the decomposition of a rectangle into many vertical strips; some additional analysis is carried out to improve the optimized transmission conditions in that case. / On a third topic, we experiment with different coarse space corrections for the Schwarz method in a simple one-dimensional setting, for both overlapping and non-overlapping subdomains. The goal is to obtain a convergence that does not deteriorate as we increase the number of subdomains. We design a coarse space correction for the Schwarz method with Robin transmission conditions by considering an augmented linear system, which avoids merging the local approximations in overlapping regions. With numerical experiments, we demonstrate that the best Robin conditions are very different for the Schwarz iteration with, and without coarse correction.

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