Networks for Flow Problems in High Contrast Media by Liliana Borcea (Stanford) JWB 335, 3:10pm Monday, December 4, 1995 Abstract We study electric or hydraulic flow problems in media with strong spatial variability (high contrast) of their properties. The mathematical problem is to solve elliptic or parabolic partial differential equations with coefficients that take very large and very small values. Both direct and inverse problems for such partial differential equations pose difficult analytical and computational questions. We describe an asymptotic analysis for transport in high contrast dielectric media which leads to a resistor- capacitor network description of the flow in the domain. We also introduce a numerical method for computing efficiently the flow fields in media with high contrast conductivity. This method combines our analytical understanding of the form of the flow field near narrow channels with standard numerical methods elsewhere in the flow regime and so it is a hybrid numerical method. Request preprints and reprints from: BORCEA This file edited 1 Nov 1995. Invitation from Ken Golden.