Stability analysis on the thermal insulation problems

TL;DR

This paper conducts a stability analysis of shape optimization problems related to thermal insulation, introducing a novel approach that does not require second variations to be normal to the boundary, and explores stability conditions for ball shapes.

Contribution

It presents a new stability analysis method for thermal insulation problems that relaxes the normality requirement of second variations, providing insights into shape stability and symmetry breaking.

Findings

Ball shapes are stable in two dimensions under certain conditions.

Translation variations are crucial in stability analysis.

Threshold for symmetry breaking relates to isoperimetric constant.

Abstract

Based on the domain variational point of view, we carry on stability analysis on two shape optimization problems from thermal insulation background. The novelty is that, we do not require that the second variation is normal to the boundary. For example, translation variation is not normal, but as one can see in our work, it not only plays a role in obtaining the necessary and sufficient condition for stability of ball shape in the first problem when heat source is radial, but also is essential in deriving the precise value of symmetry breaking threshold of insulation material in the second problem, which turns out to be related to isoperimetric constant and in turn implies that ball shapes are stable in two dimensions.