We extend an investigation into the bifurcation phenomena exhibited by an oxidation reaction in an adiabatic reactor to the case of a diabatic reactor. The primary bifurcation parameter is the fuel fraction; the inflow pressure and inflow temperature are the secondary bifurcation parameters. The inclusion of heat loss in the model does not change the static steady-state bifurcation diagram; the organising centre is a pitchfork singularity for both the adiabatic and diabatic reactors. However, unlike the adiabatic reactor, Hopf bifurcations may occur in the diabatic reactor. We construct the degenerate Hopf bifurcation curve by determining the double-Hopf locus. When the steady-state and degenerate Hopf bifurcation diagrams are combined it is found that there are 23 generic steady-state diagrams over the parameter region of interest. The implications of these structures from the perspective of flammability in the CSTR are discussed.

It is proved that the Neumann boundary value problem, which Mays and Norbury have recently connected with a certain fluid dynamics equation, has a positive solution for any positive value of a particular parameter. Uniform bounds for the solutions and symmetry on a given range of the parameter are also introduced. The proofs include Krasnoselskii's classical fixed-point theorem on cones of a Banach space and basic comparison techniques.

Conservation laws for partial differential equations can be characterised by an operator, the characteristic and a condition involving the adjoint of the Fréchet derivatives of this operator and the operator defining the partial differential equation. This approach was developed by Anco and Bluman and we exploit it to derive conditions for second-order parabolic partial differential equations to admit conservation laws. We show that such partial differential equations admit conservation laws only if the time derivative appears in one of two ways. The adjoint condition, however, is a biconditional, and we use this to prove necessary and sufficient conditions for a certain class of partial differential equations to admit a conservation law.

In this paper, we investigate minimal (weak) approximate Hessians, and completely answer the open questions raised by V. Jeyakumar and X. Q. Yang. As applications, we first give a generalised Taylor's expansion in terms of a minimal weak approximate Hessian. Then we characterise the convexity of a continuously Gâteaux differentiable function. Finally some necessary and sufficient optimality conditions are presented.

This paper investigates the effect of heat transfer on the motion of a spherical bubble in the vicinity of a rigid boundary. The effects of heat transfer between the bubble and the surrounding fluid, and the resulting loss of energy from the bubble, can be incorporated into the simple spherical bubble model with the addition of a single extra ordinary differential equation. The numerical results show that for a bubble close to an infiniterigid boundary there are significant differences in both the radius and Kelvin impulse of the bubble when the heat transfer effects are included.

To model cohesionless granular flow using continuum theory, the usual approach is to assume the cohesionless Coulomb-Mohr yield condition. However, this yield condition assumes that the angle of internal friction is constant, when according to experimental evidence for most powders the angle of internal friction is not constant along the yield locus, but decreases for decreasing normal stress component σ from a maximum value of π/2. For this reason, we consider here the more general yield function which applies for shear-index granular materials, where the angle of internal friction varies with σ. In this case, failure due to frictional slip between particles occurs when the shear and normal components of stress τ and σ satisfy the so-called Warren Spring equation (|τ|/c)n = 1 − (σ/t), where c, t and n are positive constants which are referred to as the cohesion, tensile strength and shear-index respectively, and experimental evidence indicates for many materials that the value of the shear-index n lies between 1 and 2. For many materials, the cohesion is close to zero and therefore the notion of a cohesionless shear-index granular material arises. For such materials, a continuum theory applying for shear-index cohesionless granular materials is physically plausible as a limiting ideal theory, and any analytical solutions might provide important benchmarks for numerical schemes. Here, we examine the cohesionless shearindex theory for the problem of gravity flow of granular materials through two-dimensional wedge-shaped hoppers, and we attempt to determine analytical solutions. Although some analytical solutions are found, these do not correspond to the actual hopper problem, but may serve as benchmarks for purely numerical schemes. The special analytical solutions obtained are illustrated graphically, assuming only a symmetrical stress distribution.

An analysis is made of the Daley-Kendall and Maki-Thompson rumour models starting from general initial proportions of ignorants, spreaders and stiflers in the population. We investigate as a function of the initial conditions the composition of the final population when the rumour has run its course.

Often in oil reservoirs a layer of water lies under the layer of oil. The suction pressure due to a distribution of oil wells will cause the oil-water interface to rise up towards the wells. Given a particular distribution of oil wells, we are interested in finding the flow rates of each well that maximise the total flow rate without the interface breaking through to the wells. A method for finding optimal flow rates is developed using the Muskat model to approximate the interface height, and a version of the Nelder-Mead simplex method for optimisation. A variety of results are presented, including the perhaps nonintuitive result that it is better to turn off some oil wells when they are sufficiently close to one another.

Singular perturbation methods are applied to an analysis of the operation of an isothermal gas step slider bearing of narrow geometry and operating at moderate bearing numbers. Approximate expressions are obtained for the pressure field in the lubricating gap, as well as the load-carrying capacity of the bearing; and the influence of the nature of the bearing step on those quantities is investigated. Comparisons are made with results obtained using a standard numerical package.

A multispecies harvesting model with interference is proposed. The model is based on Lotka-Volterra dynamics with two competing species which are affected not only by harvesting but also by the presence of a predator, the third species. In order to understand the dynamics of this complicated system, we choose to model the simplest possible predator response function in which the feeding rate of the predator increases linearly with prey density. We derive the conditions for global stability of the system using a Lyapunov function. The possibility of existence of a bioeconomic equilibrium is discussed. The optimal harvest policy is studied and the solution is derived in the equilibrium case using Pontryagin's maximal principle. Finally, some numerical examples are discussed.