SOLID-LIQUID PHASE CHANGES WITH DIFFERENT DENSITIES

In this paper we present a new thermodynamically consistent phase transition model describing the evolution of a liquid substance, e.g., water, in a rigid container Omega when we freeze the container. Since the density rho(2) of ice with volume fraction beta(2) is lower than the density rho(1) of water with volume fraction beta(1), experiments, for instance the freezing of a glass bottle filled with water, show that the water pressure increases up to the rupture of the bottle. When the container is not impermeable, freezing play produce a nonhomogeneous material, for instance water, ice or sorbet. Here we describe a general class of phase transition processes, including this example as a particular case. Moreover, we study the resulting nonlinear and singular PDE system from the analytical viewpoint, recovering existence of a global (in time) weak solution and also uniqueness for some particular choices of the nonlinear functions involved.