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

No abstract uploaded!

For periodic initial data with density allowed to vanish initially, we establish the global existence of strong and weak solutions to the two-dimensional barotropic compressible Navier–Stokes equations with no restrictions on the size of initial data provided the shear viscosity is a positive constant and the bulk one is λ =ρ^β with β>4/3. These results generalize and improve the previous ones due to Vaigant–Kazhikhov [Sib. Math. J. 36 (1995) 1283–1316] who required β>3. Moreover, we also prove that the densities for both the strong and weak solutions remain bounded from above independently of time. As a consequence, it is shown that both the strong and weak solutions converge to the equilibrium state as time tends to infinity.

This paper concerns the physical behaviors of any solutions to the one dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations for viscous and heat conductive gases with constant viscosities and heat conductivity for fast decaying density at far fields only. First, it is shown that the specific entropy becomes not uniformly bounded immediately after the initial time, as long as the initial density decays to vacuum at the far field at the rate not slower than $O\left(\frac1{|x|^{\ell_\rho}}\right)$ with $\ell_\rho>2$. Furthermore, for faster decaying initial density, i.e., $\ell_\rho\geq4$, a sharper result is discovered that the absolute temperature becomes uniformly positive at each positive time, no matter whether it is uniformly positive or not initially, and consequently the corresponding entropy behaves as $O(-\log(\varrho_0(x)))$ at each positive time, independent of the boundedness of the initial entropy. Such phenomena are in sharp contrast to the case with slowly decaying initial density of the rate no faster than $O(\frac1{x^2})$, for which our previous works \cite{LIXINADV,LIXINCPAM,LIXIN3DK} show that the uniform boundedness of the entropy can be propagated for all positive time and thus the temperature decays to zero at the far field. These give a complete answer to the problem concerning the propagation of uniform boundedness of the entropy for the heat conductive ideal gases and, in particular, show that the algebraic decay rate $2$ of the initial density at the far field is sharp for the uniform boundedness of the entropy. The tools to prove our main results are based on some scaling transforms, including the Kelvin transform, and a Hopf type lemma for a class of degenerate equations with possible unbounded coefficients.

For the physical vacuum free boundary problem with the sound speed being C^1/2-Holder continuous near vacuum boundaries of the one-dimensional compressible Euler equations with damping, the global existence of the smooth solution is proved, which is shown to converge to the Barenblatt self-similar solution for the porous media equation with the same total mass when the initial datum is a small perturbation of the Barenblatt solution. The pointwise convergence with a rate of density, the convergence rate of velocity in the supremum norm, and the precise expanding rate of the physical vacuum boundaries are also given. The proof is based on a construction of higher-order weighted functionals with both space and time weights capturing the behavior of solutions both near vacuum states and in large time, an introduction of a new ansatz, higher-order nonlinear energy estimates, and elliptic estimates.