Weak solutions of the incompressible Euler equations

Author(s)

Anne Caroline Bronzi

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Matemática, Estatística e Computação Científica
• Defense date: 2010-08-24

Examining board members

Helena Judith Nussenzveig Lopes; Ricardo Martins da Silva Rosa; José Luiz Boldrini; Marcelo Martins dos Santos

• Advisor: Milton da Costa Lopes Filho; Helena Judith Nussenzveig Lopes

Abstract

In this work we study the concept of weak solution of the incompressible ideal flow equations. More precisely, we study examples that highlight the shortcomings of the definition of weak solution for the Euler equations. An example is Shnirelman's flow, which is a weak solution of the Euler equations, on the bidimensional torus, compactly supported in time. This implies that weak solutions of the Euler equations are not unique. In this work we construct a numerical approximation of Shnirelman's flow, in order to visualize the structure of the flow. In joint work with Shnirelman, we modified the original construction in order to obtain a flow with more interesting physical structure whereby the visualization of the inverse energy cascade is clearer. Recently, De Lellis and Székelyhidi also constructed weak solutions of the Euler equations, in the whole space, with compact support in time and space. The technique used by them is innovative and has proved to be very effective in the construction of several counter-examples. We used the technique developed by De Lellis and Székelyhidi in order to construct weak solutions of the 2D Euler equations, coupled with a passive tracer, which are compactly supported in time and space. Finally, in our work we also studied the Euler equations with helical symmetry; we proved global existence, in time, of weak solutions, in the absence of helical swirl, provided that the initial vorticity lies in Lp, with p > 4=3, and has compact support in the plane, periodic in the axial direction. This result represents an improvement with respect to the state of art, due to Ettinger and Titi, who established the well-posedness, for bounded helical domains, assuming that the initial vorticity is bounded (AU)