We study the vanishing viscosity of the Navier-Stokes equations for interacting shocks. Given an entropy solution to <i>p</i>-system which consists of two different families of shocks interacting at some positive time, we show that such entropy solution is the vanishing viscosity limit of a family of global smooth solutions to the isentropic Navier-Stokes equations. The key point of the proofs is to derive the estimates separately before and after the interaction time and connect the incoming and outgoing viscous shock profiles.

We prove local existence of smooth solutions for large data and global smooth solutions for small data to the incompressible, resitive, viscous or inviscid Hall-MHD model. We also show a Liouville theorem for the stationary solutions.

We study linear and nonlinear Schrodinger equations defined by fractal measures. Under the assumption that the Laplacian has compact resolvent, we prove that there exists a uniqueness weak solution for a linear Schrodinger equation, and then use it to obtain the existence and uniqueness of weak solution of a nonlinear Schrodinger equation. We prove that for a class of self-similar measures on R with overlaps, the Schrodinger equations can be discretized so that the finite element method can be applied to obtain approximate solutions. We also prove that the numerical solutions converge to the actual solution and obtain the rate of convergence.

Abstract We study a class of fourth order nonlinear parabolic equations which include the thin-film equation and the quantum drift-diffusion model as special cases. We investigate these equations by first developing functional inequalities of the type $$ \int_\Omega u^{2\gamma-\alpha-\beta}\Delta\ua\Delta\ub dx \geq c\int_\Omega|\Delta \ur |^2dx, $$ which seem to be of interest on their own right.

It is well known that the Boltzmann equation is related to the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in the field of gas dynamics. The relation is either for small Knudsen number, or, for dissipative waves in the time-asymptotic sense. In this paper, we show that rarefaction waves for the Boltzmann equation are time-asymptotic stable and tend to the rarefaction waves for the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. Our main tool is the combination of techniques for viscous conservation laws and the energy method based on micro-macro decomposition of the Boltzmann equation. The expansion nature of the rarefaction waves and the suitable microscopic version of the <i>H</i>-theorem are essential elements of our analysis.