Research

# Existence of solutions of a system of 3D axisymmetric inviscid stagnation flows

GC Yang*, LF Dang and YZ Xu

### Author affiliations

College of Mathematics, Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610225, P.R. China

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### Citation and License

Boundary Value Problems 2012, 2012:153  doi:10.1186/1687-2770-2012-153

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.boundaryvalueproblems.com/content/2012/1/153

 Received: 7 February 2012 Accepted: 6 December 2012 Published: 28 December 2012

© 2012 Yang et al.; licensee Springer

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

### Abstract

A system of two integral equations is presented to describe the system of 3D axisymmetric inviscid stagnation flows related to Navier-Stokes equations and existence of its solutions is studied. Utilizing it, we construct analytically the similarity solutions of the 3D system. A nonexistence result is obtained. Previous study was only supported by numerical results.

MSC: 34B18.

##### Keywords:
Navier-Stokes equations; 3D flows; similarity solutions; integral systems; existence results

### 1 Introduction

The following system of two differential equations arising in the boundary layer problems in fluid mechanics

(1.1)

(1.2)

with boundary conditions

(1.3)

has been used to describe the system of 3D axisymmetric inviscid stagnation flow [1,2], which consists of three partial differential equations [2,3], where λ is a parameter related to the external flow components.

A solution of (1.1)-(1.3) is called a similarity solution and can be used to express the solutions of the 3D system. Regarding the study of (1.1)-(1.3), Howarth [3] presented a numerical study for the case which can be applied to the stagnation region of an ellipsoid. Davey [2] investigated numerically the stagnation region near a saddle point (). The two-dimensional cases, or and , and the special cases of the Falkner-Skan equation were solved by Hiemenz [4] and by Homann [5], respectively. Regarding the Falkner-Skan problems, further analytical study can be found in [6-10]. Also, one may refer to recent review of similarity solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations [11].

However, up to now, there has been very little analytical study on the existence of solutions of (1.1)-(1.3).

The main aim of this paper is to study the existence of solutions of (1.1)-(1.3) analytically for the case of . The method is to present a system of two integral equations and study the existence of its solutions and then use it to construct the solutions of (1.1)-(1.3). Also, a nonexistence result is obtained.

### 2 A system of two integral equations related to (1.1)-(1.3)

In this section, we present a system of two integral equations to describe a system of (1.1)-(1.3) under suitable conditions, which will be utilized in Section 4.

Let

and

Lemma 2.1Ifis a solution of (1.1)-(1.3), then.

Proof Since , we have

(2.1)

Notice that , , , and for .

If , we know and then is decreasing on , which implies that exists. Hence, by (2.1).

If , we have by (1.2). By (2.1), there exists such that and then there exists such that . Obviously, by . We prove that is decreasing on .

In fact, if there exist with such that . Let such that , then and .

Differentiating (1.2) with η, we have

then

a contradiction. Hence, is decreasing on and then .

This completes the proof. □

Theorem 2.1Ifis a solution of (1.1)-(1.2), then

(2.2)

(2.3)

has a solution, wheredenotes the Green function forwithanddefined by

(2.4)

Proof Assume that . Let for be the inverse function to . It follows that is strictly increasing on and with , . Let for , by Lemma 2.1, . This implies that for and x is continuous on . By Lemma 2.1, we see that x is continuous from the left at 1. Hence, we have and , i.e., .

Using the chain rule to , we obtain and by the inverse function theorem, we have

This, together with , implies

Integrating the last equality from 0 to t implies

Let

Then . By , we know that y is continuous from the left at 1 and then .

Notice that , , we have .

Differentiating with t, we have

From this, we have for and .

Differentiating with t and utilizing , we have

Hence,

Substituting g, , , and f into (1.2) implies

(2.5)

Integrating (2.5) from t to 1, we have

By , then

Substituting f, , , and g into (1.1) implies

By , we have

Therefore,

where is defined by (2.4). Hence, is a solution of (2.2)-(2.3) in Q. □

### 3 Positive solutions of the system (2.2)-(2.3)

In this section, we will use the fixed point theorem to study the existence of positive solutions of the system (2.2)-(2.3).

Let

It is easy to verify

We define some functions

By computation, , , there exists such that for and .

In order to study the existence of solutions of (2.2)-(2.3) in Q for , we denote the norm of the Banach space by

where .

Let and be a natural number, we define

where , ,

(3.1)

Notation

and

where is defined by (2.4).

Let , we define an operator F as follows:

where

It is easy to verify that , θ are continuous operators from into and , , we know the following proposition holds:

Lemma 3.1is a continuous and compact operator fromto.

Lemma 3.2Letandsuch that

(3.2)

(3.3)

Then the following assertions hold:

(i) for.

(ii) and, whereis a total variation ofyon.

(iii) If, thenis increasing onand thenfor.

Proof We shall use the basic fact: let and () be local minimum (maximum), then (≤0).

(i) If there exists such that , by , we know that there exists such that . Differentiating (3.3) with t twice, we have

(3.4)

By and (3.4), we have

a contradiction. Hence, for .

If there exists such that , let , by and , we may assume such that . This implies , i.e., , and . By (3.4) and , we know

then

a contradiction. Hence, (i) holds.

(ii) Let such that and . If , we prove that is increasing on and decreasing on .

Since and , then . Let . If there exist with such that , let such that , then by (i). From , and (3.4), we know

a contradiction.

If there exist with such that , let such that , then by (i). Analogously, we know easily

a contradiction. Hence,

and , i.e., (ii) holds.

(iii) Let . By (i) and , we know and then is increasing on and then for . Hence, (iii) holds. □

Lemma 3.3[12]

LetEbe a Banach space, Dbe a bounded open set of E and, is compact. Iffor anyand, thenFhas a fixed point in.

Lemma 3.4Let, thenFhas a fixed pointin, i.e., there existssuch that

(3.5)

(3.6)

hold.

Proof Let

where . We prove for and with .

In fact, if there exist and μ with and such that , by Lemma 3.2(i) and (iii), we have .

Since and for , this, together with for and , implies

And then , i.e., .

By (3.3), we have

(3.7)

Noticing that and for , we obtain for . This, together with (3.7) and Lemma 3.2(ii), implies

i.e., . Hence,

a contradiction.

By Lemmas 3.1 and 3.3, F has a fixed point in . □

Lemma 3.5Letbe in Lemma 3.4, then

(i) is bounded on.

(ii) is bounded onfor any.

Proof By Lemma 3.3(i), we know . By (3.5), we have

(3.8)

(i) For , we know for , i.e., is decreasing in , by , for . By for and (3.5), we have

(3.9)

And then for . Obviously, for . This, together with the decrease in , implies

(3.10)

Let , μ defined by

where defined in (3.1).

It is easy to verify for . And then

The last two inequalities imply that is bounded on .

(ii) By (3.8),

we know that is bounded on for any . □

Lemma 3.6Letbe in Lemma 3.4, then

(i) andis increasing in.

(ii) is bounded and equicontinuous infor any.

Proof

(i) Lemma 3.2(i) and (iii) imply the desired results.

(ii) For , let such that . Since on , by Lemma 3.2(ii), , we obtain .

Differentiating (3.6) with t twice, we have . Integrating this equality from 0 to , we have

Noticing that and for and Lemma 3.2(ii), we know

i.e., is bounded on . Let (where ), we know

This implies that is equicontinuous on . □

Theorem 3.1There existssuch that

(3.11)

(3.12)

hold, where

Proof Let be in Lemma 3.4, by Lemma 3.5(ii) and (iii), we know that is bounded and equicontinuous on for any . Letting (), utilizing the diagonal principle and the Arzela-Ascoli theorem, we know that there exists a subsequence of and such that converges to for . Without loss of generality, we assume that is itself of .

By Lemma 3.6, we know that is bounded and equicontinuous on for any and then is bounded and equicontinuous on . Let (), the diagonal principle and the Arzela-Ascoli theorem imply that there exist y and in and two subsequences and with such that converges to for with and converges to for each . For the sake of convenience, we assume that and are itself of . By , we obtain and then for .

Since

converges to and converges to for , by the Lebesgue dominated theorem (the dominated function , , we have that satisfies (3.11) and .

Fix and choose such that , then

Noticing that and converges to for , by the Lebesgue dominated theorem (the dominated function on ), we have

Differentiating the last equality twice, we know

By (i), we know and and then . This, together with (2.4), implies that satisfies (3.12). Clearly, . □

Theorem 3.2For, the system (2.2)-(2.3) has at least a solutioninQ.

Proof Let in Theorem 3.1. It is clear that we only prove . If , by (3.10), we obtain for and then . Next, we prove for for .

Let such that , then

From this and , we obtain and .

Let and , we prove

(3.13)

By and , there exists such that . Since for , i.e., is concave down on , then for and for . Hence, .

By (3.11), we have

we know

Integrating the last inequality from to 1 and utilizing , we have

Hence, (3.13) holds.

By , and , we have and , then

i.e.,

Hence,

This, together with (3.13), implies

i.e.,

Since for , we have

And then for .

Finally, we prove for .

In fact, if there exists such that , by , there exists such that for and .

From

and , we obtain

By (3.11), we have

i.e., , . Integrating this inequality from to δ, we have

and then , a contradiction.

This completes the proof. □

### 4 Existence of solutions of (1.1)-(1.3)

In this section, we use positive solutions obtained in Theorem 3.2 to construct the solutions of (1.1)-(1.3) in Γ.

Theorem 4.1For, the system (1.1)-(1.3) has at least a solution.

Proof Let , by Theorem 3.2, the system (2.2)-(2.3) has at least a solution in Q. By and (2.2), we know

Let , and then

we have .

Let

(4.1)

Then is strictly increasing on and

Let be the inverse function to , we define the function

Then

and

From (4.1), we have

(4.2)

Differentiating (4.2) with respect to η, we have

(4.3)

Then for .

Differentiating (4.3) with respect to η, we have

(4.4)

Differentiating (2.2) with respect to t, we have

(4.5)

By setting and utilizing and (4.3), we have

(4.6)

By (4.3), (4.4), (4.5) and (4.6), we have

By (4.1), we have . Differentiating with respect to η, we have

Differentiating (2.3) with t twice and combining (4.5) and (4.6), we obtain

This completes the proof. □

Remark 4.1 For , by Theorem 1 [2], (1.1)-(1.3) has no solution such that with for , is a constant.

Utilizing the system (2.2)-(2.3), we know easily that (1.1)-(1.3) has no solution in Γ for .

In fact, if (1.1)-(1.3) has a solution for some , by Theorem 2.1, then (1.1)-(1.3) has a solution in . Noticing that

we know

a contradiction.

This research uses integrals of equations to investigate the existence of solutions of the 3D axisymmetric inviscid stagnation flows related to Navier-Stokes equations and supplies a gap of analytical study in this field.

### Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

### Authors’ contributions

All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

### Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the anonymous referees for their valuable comments. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11171046) and the Scientific Research Foundation of the Education Department of Sichuan Province, China.

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