Materials Instabilities: Regularity Theory and the Calculus of Variations

该项目的总体目标是发展变分法和偏微分方程系统的正则性理论的技术。 指导这项工作的应用主要来自于液体和固体的连续介质力学领域。 工具从几何测量理论，理论研究的推广表面，将发挥重要作用。 该分析将进行时间依赖性问题，包括在某些情况下，惯性效应被忽略的某些理想化。主要重点将是对复杂组成的材料的有效描述的搜索，在散装和界面处的解决方案的规律性的研究，并在其振荡或滞后行为的预测随着时间的推移。该研究将对材料科学中发生的一系列现象进行数学描述和预测。这包括相变（液相和固相之间），结构，成核和生长的这些阶段，以及固体中的断裂和缺陷。 这项工作的一个重要组成部分将是新的人造材料，如形状记忆合金，铁电，磁性和磁致伸缩材料，复合材料，液晶和薄膜的数学模型的研究。 虽然出乎意料，但该理论也为计算机视觉中的图像分割提供了新的方法。数学的挑战在于描述微观结构的动力学和演化，以及发生在截然不同的时间或空间尺度上的现象。它们需要最近开发的数学工具和新的数学技术的引入。

The general objective of this project is the development of techniques in the calculus of variations and in the regularity theory for systems of partial differential equations. The applications that guide this work come mainly fromthe areas of continuum mechanics of liquids and solids. Tools from geometric measure theory, a theory for the study of generalizations of surfaces, will play animportant role. The analysis will be undertaken for time-dependent problems, including in some cases certain idealizations where inertial effects are neglected.The main focus will be on the search for the effective description of materials with complicated composition, on the study of regularity properties of solutions in the bulk and at interfaces, and on the prediction of their oscillatory or hysteretic behavior as time evolves. The research will be on the mathematical description and prediction of a range ofphenomena that occur in material science. This includes phase transformations (between liquid and solid phases), the structure, nucleation and growth of such phases, and fracture and defects in solids. An important part of this work willbe the study of mathematical models for novel man-made materials such as shape memory alloys, ferroelectric, magnetic and magnetostrictive materials, composites, liquid crystals, and thin films. Although unexpected, the mathematicaltheory also provides new methods for image segmentation in computer vision. The mathematical challenges lie in the description of the dynamics and evolution of microscopic structures and of phenomena that occur at vastly different temporal or spatialscales. They require recently developed mathematical tools and the introduction of new mathematical techniques.