CMX Lunch Seminar
Professor Hou focuses on multiscale problems arising from geophysical applications and fluid dynamics, the Millennium Problem on the 3D incompressible Navier-Strokes equations, model reduction for stochastic problems with high dimensional input variables, and adaptive data analysis. Research Areas include: multiscale analysis and computation, interfacial problems, stochastic PDEs and uncertainty quantification, global regularity of 3D incompressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations, adaptive data analysis.
Whether the 3D incompressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations can develop a finite time singularity from smooth initial data is one of the most challenging problems in nonlinear PDEs. In an effort to provide a rigorous proof of the potential Euler singularity revealed by Luo-Hou's computation, we develop a novel method of analysis and prove that the original De Gregorio model and the Hou-Lou model develop a finite time singularity from smooth initial data. Using this framework and some techniques from Elgindi's recent work on the Euler singularity, we prove the finite time blowup of the 2D Boussinesq and 3D Euler equations with $C^{1,\alpha}$ initial velocity and boundary. Further, we present some new numerical evidence that the 3D incompressible Euler equations with smooth initial data develop a potential finite time singularity at the origin, which is quite different from the Luo-Hou scenario. Our study also shows that the 3D Navier-Stokes equations develop nearly singular solutions with maximum vorticity increasing by a factor of $10^7$. However, the viscous effect eventually dominates vortex stretching and the 3D Navier-Stokes equations narrowly escape finite time blowup. Finally, we present strong numerical evidence that the 3D Navier-Stokes equations with slowly decaying time-dependent viscosity develop a finite time singularity.