No Arabic abstract
We consider a strongly nonlinear PDE system describing solid-solid phase transitions in shape memory alloys. The system accounts for the evolution of an order parameter (related to different symmetries of the crystal lattice in the phase configurations), of the stress (and the displacement), and of the absolute temperature. The resulting equations present several technical difficulties to be tackled: in particular, we emphasize the presence of nonlinear coupling terms, higher order dissipative contributions, possibly multivalued operators. As for the evolution of temperature, a highly nonlinear parabolic equation has to be solved for a right hand side that is controlled only in L^1. We prove the existence of a solution for a regularized version, by use of a time discretization technique. Then, we perform suitable a priori estimates which allow us pass to the limit and find a weak global-in-time solution to the system.
Neutron diffraction studies as a function of temperature on solid solutions of MnSe and MnTe in the Se rich region are presented. Interestingly as Te is doped in MnSe, the structural transformation to NiAs phase diminishes, both in terms of % fraction of compound as well as in terms of transition temperature. In MnTe$_{0.3}$Se$_{0.7}$, the NaCl to NiAs phase transformation occurs at about 40K and although it is present at room temperature in MnTe$_{0.5}$Se$_{0.5}$, its volume fraction is only about 10% of the total volume of sample. The magnetic ordering temperature of the cubic phase decreases with increasing Te content while the hexagonal phase orders at the same temperature as in MnSe. Anomalies in thermal evolution of lattice parameters at magnetic ordering as well as structural transition temperatures indicate presence of magnetostructural coupling in these compounds.
We analyze generic sequences for which the geometrically linear energy [E_eta(u,chi):= eta^{-frac{2}{3}}int_{B_{0}(1)} left| e(u)- sum_{i=1}^3 chi_ie_iright|^2 d x+eta^frac{1}{3} sum_{i=1}^3 |Dchi_i|(B_{0}(1))] remains bounded in the limit $eta to 0$. Here $ e(u) :=1/2(Du + Du^T)$ is the (linearized) strain of the displacement $u$, the strains $e_i$ correspond to the martensite strains of a shape memory alloy undergoing cubic-to-tetragonal transformations and $chi_i:B_{0}(1) to {0,1}$ is the partition into phases. In this regime it is known that in addition to simple laminates also branched structures are possible, which if austenite was present would enable the alloy to form habit planes. In an ansatz-free manner we prove that the alignment of macroscopic interfaces between martensite twins is as predicted by well-known rank-one conditions. Our proof proceeds via the non-convex, non-discrete-valued differential inclusion [e(u) in bigcup_{1leq i eq jleq 3} operatorname{conv} {e_i,e_j}] satisfied by the weak limits of bounded energy sequences and of which we classify all solutions. In particular, there exist no convex integration solutions of the inclusion with complicated geometric structures.
Nucleation of a solid in solid is initiated by the appearance of distinct dynamical heterogeneities, consisting of `active particles whose trajectories show an abrupt transition from ballistic to diffusive, coincident with the discontinuous transition in microstructure from a {it twinned martensite} to {it ferrite}. The active particles exhibit intermittent jamming and flow. The nature of active particle trajectories decides the fate of the transforming solid -- on suppressing single particle diffusion, the transformation proceeds via rare string-like correlated excitations, giving rise to twinned martensitic nuclei. These string-like excitations flow along ridges in the potential energy topography set up by inactive particles. We characterize this transition using a thermodynamics in the space of trajectories in terms of a dynamical action for the active particles confined by the inactive particles. Our study brings together the physics of glass, jamming, plasticity and solid nucleation.
This paper concerns a time-independent thermoelectric model with two different boundary conditions. The model is a nonlinear coupled system of the Maxwell equations and an elliptic equation. By analyzing carefully the nonlinear structure of the equations, and with the help of the De Giorgi-Nash estimate for elliptic equations, we obtain existence of weak solutions on Lipschitz domains for general boundary data. Using Campanatos method, we establish regularity results of the weak solutions.
We consider a singularly-perturbed two-well problem in the context of planar geometrically linear elasticity to model a rectangular martensitic nucleus in an austenitic matrix. We derive the scaling regimes for the minimal energy in terms of the problem parameters, which represent the {shape} of the nucleus, the quotient of the elastic moduli of the two phases, the surface energy constant, and the volume fraction of the two martensitic variants. We identify several different scaling regimes, which are distinguished either by the exponents in the parameters, or by logarithmic corrections, for which we have matching upper and lower bounds.