We establish the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions to the Cauchy problem for the isentropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations in three spatial dimensions with smooth initial data that are of small energy but possibly large oscillations with constant state as far field, which could be either vacuum or nonvacuum. The initial density is allowed to vanish, and the spatial measure of the set of vacuum can be arbitrarily large; in particular, the initial density can even have compact support. These results generalize previous results on classical solutions for initial densities being strictly away from vacuum and are the first for global classical solutions that may have large oscillations and can contain vacuum states. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

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We consider a system coupling the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations to the Vlasov–Fokker–Planck equation. Such a problem arises in the description of particulate flows. We design a numerical scheme to simulate the behavior of the system. This scheme is asymptotic-preserving, thus efficient in both the kinetic and hydrodynamic regimes. It has a numerical stability condition controlled by the non-stiff convection operator, with an implicit treatment of the stiff drag term and the Fokker–Planck operator. Yet, consistent to a standard asymptotic-preserving Fokker–Planck solver or an incompressible Navier–Stokes solver, only the conjugate–gradient method and fast Poisson and Helmholtz solvers are needed. Numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and asymptotic behavior of the scheme, with several interesting applications.

As V. I. Arnold observed in the 1960s, the Euler equations of incompressible fluid flow correspond formally to geodesic equations in a group of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms. Working in an Eulerian framework, we study incompressible flows of shapes as critical paths for action (kinetic energy) along transport paths constrained to be shape densities (characteristic functions). The formal geodesic equations for this problem are Euler equations for incompressible, inviscid potential flow of fluid with zero pressure and surface tension on the free boundary. The problem of minimizing this action exhibits an instability associated with microdroplet formation, with the following outcomes: Any two shapes of equal volume can be approximately connected by an Euler spray---a countable superposition of ellipsoidal geodesics. The infimum of the action is the Wasserstein distance squared, and is almost never attained except in dimension 1. Every Wasserstein geodesic between bounded densities of compact support provides a solution of the (compressible) pressureless Euler system that is a weak limit of (incompressible) Euler sprays. Each such Wasserstein geodesic is also the unique minimizer of a relaxed least-action principle for a two-fluid mixture theory corresponding to incompressible fluid mixed with vacuum.

In this paper, we consider the initial-boundary value problem of the 3D primitive equations for planetary oceanic and atmospheric dynamics with only horizontal eddy viscosity in the horizontal momentum equations and only horizontal diffusion in the temperature equation. Global well-posedness of strong solution is established for any $H^2$ initial data. An $N$-dimensional logarithmic Sobolev embedding inequality, which bounds the $L^\infty$ norm in terms of the $L^q$ norms up to a logarithm of the $L^p$-norm, for $p>N$, of the first order derivatives, and a system version of the classic Gronwall inequality are exploited to establish the required a priori $H^2$ estimates for the global regularity.