Asymptotic behavior of solutions to the Stefan problem with a kinetic condition at the free boundary

Abstract

Abstract We study the large time behaviour of the free boundary for a one-phase Stefan problem with supercooling and a kinetic condition u = −ε|⋅ṡ| at the free boundary x = s(t) . The problem is posed on the semi-infinite strip [0,∞) with unit Stefan number and bounded initial temperature ϕ( x ) ≤ 0, such that ϕ → −1 − δ as x → ∞, where δ is constant. Special solutions and the asymptotic behaviour of the free boundary are considered for the cases ε ≥ 0 with δ negative, positive and zero, respectively. We show that, for ε > 0, the free boundary is asymptotic to , δ t /ε if < δ > 0 respectively, and that when δ = 0 the large time behaviour of the free boundary depends more sensitively on the initial temperature. We also give a brief summary of the corresponding results for a radially symmetric spherical crystal with kinetic undercooling and Gibbs-Thomson conditions at the free boundary.