GLOBAL SOLUTIONS TO THE NAVIER-STOKES EQUATIONS FOR COMPRESSIBLE HEAT-CONDUCTING FLOW WITH SYMMETRY AND FREE BOUNDARY

Abstract

ABSTRACT Global solutions of the multidimensional Navier-Stokes equations for compressible heat-conducting flow are constructed, with spherically symmetric initial data of large oscillation between a static solid core and a free boundary connected to a surrounding vacuum state. The free boundary connects the compressible heat-conducting fluids to the vacuum state with free normal stress and zero normal heat flux. The fluids are initially assumed to fill with a finite volume and zero density at the free boundary, and with bounded positive density and temperature between the solid core and the initial position of the free boundary. One of the main features of this problem is the singularity of solutions near the free boundary. Our approach is to combine an effective difference scheme to construct approximate solutions with the energy methods and the pointwise estimate techniques to deal with the singularity of solutions near the free boundary and to obtain the bounded estimates of the solutions and the free boundary as time evolves. The convergence of the difference scheme is established. It is also proved that no vacuum develops between the solid core and the free boundary, and the free boundary expands with finite speed.