In the context of a variational model for the epitaxial growth of strained elastic films, we study the effects of the presence of anisotropic surface energies in the determination of equilibrium configurations. We show that the threshold effect that describes the stability of flat morphologies in the isotropic case remains valid for weak anisotropies, but is no longer present in the case of highly anisotropic surface energies, where we show that the flat configuration is always a local minimizer...

We consider a class of variational problems for differential inclusions, related to the control of wild fires. The area burned by the fire at time t> 0 is modelled as the reachable set for a differential inclusion $\dot{x}$∈F(x), starting from an initial set R0. To block the fire, a barrier can be constructed progressively in time. For each t> 0, the portion of the wall constructed within time t is described by a rectifiable set γ(t) ⊂${ℝ}^2$. In this paper we show that the search for blocking strategies...

In the present paper the author discusses certain multiple integrals $I(u)$ of the calculus of variations satisfying convexity conditions, and no growth property, and the corresponding Serrin integrals $\Im (u)$, to which the existence theorems in [3,4,5] do not apply. However, in the present paper, the integrals $I(u)$ and $\Im (u)$ are reduced to simpler form $H(v)$ and $\mathscr{H}(v)$ to which the existence theorems above apply. Thus, we derive that $I(u)\le \Im (u)$, $H(v)\le \mathscr{H}(v)$, we obtain the existence of the absolute minimum for the Serrin forms $\Im (u)$ and $\mathscr{H}(v)$, and...

We establish some new results about the Γ-limit, with respect to the L1-topology, of two different (but related) phase-field approximations $\{{ℰ}_{\}},\{{\widetilde{ℰ}}_{\}}$ ℰ ε ε ,   x10ff65; ℰ ε ε of the so-called Euler’s Elastica Bending Energy for curves in the plane. In particular we characterize theΓ-limit as ε → 0 of ℰε, and show that in general the Γ-limits of ℰεand $\widetilde{ℰ}$ x10ff65; ℰ ε do not coincide on indicator functions of sets with non-smooth boundary. More precisely we show that the domain of theΓ-limit of $\widetilde{ℰ}$ x10ff65;...

We introduce the space $GBD$ of generalized functions of bounded deformation and study the structure properties of these functions: the rectiability and the slicing properties of their jump sets, and the existence of their approximate symmetric gradients. We conclude by proving a compactness results for $GBD$, which leads to a compactness result for the space $GSBD$ of generalized special functions of bounded deformation. The latter is connected to the existence of solutions to a weak formulation of some variational...

Using a calibration method we prove that, if $\Gamma \subset \Omega$ is a closed regular hypersurface and if the function $g$ is discontinuous along $\Gamma$ and regular outside, then the function $u_{\beta }$ which solves$$\left\{\begin{array}{cc}\Delta u_{\beta }=\beta (u_{\beta }-g)\hfill & \text{in}\Omega \setminus \Gamma \hfill \\ {\partial }_{\nu }{u}_{\beta }=0\hfill & \text{on}\partial \Omega \cup \Gamma \hfill \end{array}\right.$$is in turn discontinuous along $\Gamma$ and it is the unique absolute minimizer of the non-homogeneous Mumford-Shah functional$${\int }_{\Omega \setminus S_u}{\left|\nabla u\right|}^{2}dx+{\mathscr{H}}^{n-1}\left(S_u\right)+\beta {\int }_{\Omega \setminus S_u}{(u-g)}^{2}dx,$$over $SBV\left(\Omega \right)$, for $\beta$ large enough. Applications of the result to the study of the gradient flow by the method of minimizing movements are shown.