On the Maximum Principle for Pseudoparabolic Equations.

Abstract : This report consider the equation d/dt (mu - lambda delta mu)-delta mu=0 in a cylindrical domain. Unlike the heat equation, the positivity of the boundary data is not sufficient to insure that the solution is nonnegative. It is desirable to identify those boundary data for which the above property is true. One reason is that, since the above equation is a model for heat conduction and for fluid flow in fractured porous media, it is of interest to locate those boundary data that make the correspondent physical process meaningful. In this paper several boundary value problems associated with the above equation are studied and necessary and sufficient conditions on the data are given to insure the nonnegativity of the solution.