Mathematical study of a system of multi-dimensional non-local evolution equations describing surfactant-laden two-fluid shear flows

Abstract

This article studies a coupled system of model multi-dimensional partial differential equations (PDEs) that arise in the nonlinear dynamics of two-fluid Couette flow when insoluble surfactants are present on the interface. The equations have been derived previously, but a rigorous study of local and global existence of their solutions, or indeed solutions of analogous systems, has not been considered previously. The evolution PDEs are two-dimensional in space and contain novel pseudo-differential terms that emerge from asymptotic analysis and matching in the multi-scale problem at hand. The one-dimensional surfactant-free case was studied previously, where travelling wave solutions were constructed numerically and their stability investigated; in addition, the travelling wave solutions were justified mathematically. The present study is concerned with some rigorous results of the multi-dimensional surfactant system, including local well posedness and smoothing results when there is full coupling between surfactant dynamics and interfacial motion, and global existence results when such coupling is absent. As far as we know such results are new for non-local thin film equations in either one or two dimensions.