Homogenization of reaction-diffusion problems with nonlinear drift in thin structures

Sammanfattning: We study the question of periodic homogenization of a variably scaled reaction-diffusion equation with non-linear drift of polynomial type. The non-linear drift was derived as hydrodynamic limit of a totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) for a population of interacting particles crossing a domain with obstacle. We consider three different geometries: (i) Bounded domain crossed by a finitely thin flat composite layer; (ii) Bounded domain crossed by an infinitely thin flat composite layer; (iii) Unbounded composite domain.\end{itemize} For the thin layer cases, we consider our reaction-diffusion problem endowed with slow or moderate drift. Using energy-type estimates as well as concepts like thin-layer convergence and two-scale convergence, we derive homogenized evolution equations and the corresponding effective model parameters. Special attention is paid to the derivation of the effective transmission conditions across the separating limit interfaces. As a special scaling, the problem with large drift is treated separately for an unbounded composite domain. Because of the imposed large drift, this nonlinearity is expected to explode in the limit of a vanishing scaling parameter. To deal with this special case, we employ two-scale formal homogenization asymptotics with drift to derive the corresponding upscaled model equations as well as the structure of the effective transport tensors. Finally, we use Schauder's fixed point Theorem as well as monotonicity arguments to study the weak solvability of the upscaled model posed in the unbounded domain. This study wants to contribute with theoretical understanding needed when designing thin composite materials which are resistant to slow, moderate, and high velocity impacts.