On instability of a generic compressible two-fluid model in $\mathbb R^3$

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a specific compressible two-fluid model in three-dimensional space becomes linearly and nonlinearly unstable when the capillary pressure function's derivative at equilibrium is positive, contrasting with known stability cases.

Contribution

It establishes the instability of the constant equilibrium state for the two-fluid model when the capillary pressure's derivative is positive, filling a gap in the stability analysis.

Findings

Linear solutions grow exponentially in Sobolev space

Nonlinear instability in the sense of Hadamard

Contrasts with stability when $f'(1) \\leq 0$

Abstract

We are concerned with the instability of a generic compressible two-fluid model in the whole space $\mathbb{R}^3$, where the capillary pressure $f(\alpha^-\rho^-)=P^+-P^-\neq 0$ is taken into account. For the case that the capillary pressure is a strictly decreasing function near the equilibrium, namely, $f'(1)<0$, Evje-Wang-Wen established global stability of the constant equilibrium state for the three-dimensional Cauchy problem under some smallness assumptions. Recently, Wu-Yao-Zhang proved global stability of the constant equilibrium state for the case $P^+=P^-$ (corresponding to $f'(1)=0$). In this work, we investigate the instability of the constant equilibrium state for the case that the capillary pressure is a strictly increasing function near the equilibrium, namely, $f'(1)>0$. First, by employing Hodge decomposition technique and making detailed analysis of the Green's function for the corresponding linearized system, we construct solutions of the linearized problem that grow exponentially in time in the Sobolev space $H^k$, thus leading to a global instability result for the linearized problem. Moreover, with the help of the global linear instability result and a local existence theorem of classical solutions to the original nonlinear system, we can then show the instability of the nonlinear problem in the sense of Hadamard by making a delicate analysis on the properties of the semigroup. Therefore, our result shows that for the case $f'(1)>0$, the constant equilibrium state of the two-fluid model is linearly globally unstable and nonlinearly locally unstable in the sense of Hadamard, which is in contrast to the cases $f'(1)<0$ and $P^+=P^-$ (corresponding to $f'(1)=0$) where the constant equilibrium state of the two--fluid model is nonlinearly globally stable.