For the three-dimensional full compressible Navier–Stokes system describing the motion of a viscous, compressible, heat-conductive, and Newtonian polytropic fluid, we establish the global existence and uniqueness of classical solutions with smooth initial data which are of small energy but possibly large oscillations where the initial density is allowed to vanish. Moreover, for the initial data, which may be discontinuous and contain vacuum states, we also obtain the global existence of weak solutions. These results generalize previous ones on classical and weak solutions for initial density being strictly away from a vacuum, and are the first for global classical and weak solutions which may have large oscillations and can contain vacuum states.

We study the wave propagation speed problem on metric measure spaces, emphasizing on self-similar sets that are not postcritically finite. We prove that a sub-Gaussian lower heat kernel estimate leads to infinite propagation speed, extending a result of Y.-T. Lee to include bounded and unbounded generalized Sierpi\'nski carpets as well as some fractal blowups. We also formulate conditions under which a Gaussian upper heat kernel estimate leads to finite propagation speed, and apply this result to two classes of iterated function systems with overlaps, including those defining the classical infinite Bernoulli convolutions.

We review the existence results of traveling wave solutions to the reaction-diffusion equations with periodic diffusion (convection) coefficients and combustion (bistable) nonlinearities. We prove that whenever traveling waves exist, the solutions of the initial value problem with either frontlike or pulselike data propagate with the constant effective speeds of traveling waves in all suitable directions. In the case of bistable nonlinearity and one space dimension, we give an example of nonexistence of traveling waves which causes quenching (localization) of wavefront propagation. Quenching (localization) only occurs when the variations of the media from their constant mean values are large enough. Our related numerical results also provide evidence for this phenomenon in the parameter regimes not covered by the analytical example. Finally, we comment on the role of the effective wave speeds in

It is known that the maximum diameter for the rupture-risk assessment of the abdominal aortic aneurysm is a generally good method, but not sufficient. Alternative features obtained with computational modeling may provide additional useful criteria. Though computational approaches are noninvasive, they are often time-consuming because of the high computational complexity. In this paper, we present a highly parallel algorithm for the numerical simulation of unsteady blood flows in the patient-specific abdominal aorta. We model the blood flow with the unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, and solve the discretized system with a highly scalable domain decomposition method. With this approach, the complete flow field can be obtained in less than an hour, instead of days with older methods. We show experimentally that the proposed method offers accurate solutions of the pressure, the velocity and the wall shear stress, and the parallel efficiency is higher than 70% on a parallel computer with more than 1,000 processor cores.

We study convolution groups generated by completely monotone sequences and completely monotone functions. Using a convolution group, we define a fractional calculus for a certain class of distributions. When acting on causal functions, this definition agrees with the traditional Riemann-Liouville definition for t>0 but includes some singularities at t=0 so that the group property holds. Using this group, we are able to extend the definition of Caputo derivatives of order in (0,1) to a certain class of locally integrable functions without using the first derivative. The group property allows us to de-convolve the fractional differential equations to integral equations with completely monotone kernels, which then enables us to prove the general Gronwall inequality (or comparison principle) with the most general conditions. This then opens the door of a priori energy estimates of fractional PDEs. Some other fundamental results for fractional ODEs are also established within this frame under very weak conditions. Besides, we also obtain some interesting results about completely monotone sequences.