Motion of Free Boundaries in Fluids

                             by

                Mary Pugh, Courant Institute

         JWB 335, 3:20pm Monday, February 10, 1997

                          Abstract


This talk will cover a number of free boundary problems in
fluid flows.  Here the free boundary is the interface
between two fluids that do not mix.  Surface tension, the
force that keeps the fluids separate, is proportional to the
curvature of the interface.  This makes surface tension a
nonlinear high-order (two derivatives) effect and yields
analytically interesting PDEs.

I will discuss the Hele-Shaw problem, which models the
motion of fluids that are trapped between close glass
plates. I will also discuss models for the motion of a thin
film of liquid on a solid surface.  In both cases, the
liquids are extremely viscous.  I will also present work on
finite-time singularities in thin jets of inviscid fluids.
I will present analytical results, discuss modelling issues,
and present computations.

Requests for preprints and reprints to: fife@math.utah.edu
This source can be found at http://www.math.utah.edu/research/