On the computation of measure-valued solutions

A standard paradigm for the existence of solutions in fluid dynamics is based on the construction of sequences of approximate solutions or approximate minimizers. This approach faces serious obstacles, most notably in multi-dimensional problems, where the persistence of oscillations at ever finer scales prevents compactness. Indeed, these oscillations are an indication, consistent with recent theoretical results, of the possible lack of existence/uniqueness of solutions within the standard framework of integrable functions. It is in this context that Young measures – parametrized probability measures which can describe the limits of such oscillatory sequences – offer the more general paradigm of measure-valued solutions for these problems. We present viable numerical algorithms to compute approximate measure-valued solutions, based on the realization of approximate measures as laws of Monte Carlo sampled random fields. We prove convergence of these algorithms to measure-valued solutions for the equations of compressible and incompressible inviscid fluid dynamics, and present a large number of numerical experiments which provide convincing evidence for the viability of the new paradigm. We also discuss the use of these algorithms, and their extensions, in uncertainty quantification and contexts other than fluid dynamics, such as non-convex variational problems in materials science.