A free boundary problem describing migration into rubbers -- quest of the large time behavior

TL;DR

This paper investigates a free boundary problem modeling the migration of diffusants into rubber, proving global solvability and analyzing long-term behavior despite challenges from nonlinear boundary conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of a one-phase free boundary problem with nonlinear kinetics, establishing global existence and large time behavior results.

Findings

Proved global solvability of the model.

Analyzed the large time behavior of solutions.

Addressed difficulties from nonlinear boundary conditions.

Abstract

In many industrial applications, rubber-based materials are routinely used in conjunction with various penetrants or diluents in gaseous or liquid form. It is of interest to estimate theoretically the penetration depth as well as the amount of diffusants stored inside the material. In this framework, we prove the global solvability and explore the large time-behavior of solutions to a one-phase free boundary problem with nonlinear kinetic condition that is able to describe the migration of diffusants into rubber. The key idea in the proof of the large time behavior is to benefit of a contradiction argument, since it is difficult to obtain uniform estimates for the growth rate of the free boundary due to the use of a Robin boundary condition posed at the fixed boundary.