Optimal insulation and concentration breaking for nonlinear Robin boundary value problems

We consider an optimal insulation problem for a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^N$ driven by the $p$-Laplace operator ($p>1$).

We model the convective heat transfer between the body and the environment, which corresponds, before insulation, to a nonlinear Robin boundary value problem.

Assuming the body is surrounded by a thin layer of insulating material of size $\varepsilon^{\frac{1}{p-1}}$, we compute the $\Gamma$-limit of the governing energy functional as $\varepsilon \to 0^+$.

Furthermore, we study the optimization of the heat content among all possible distributions of the insulating material with a fixed total mass.

Finally, we highlight a concentration breaking phenomenon.

Under a suitable non-degeneracy condition, if the boundary of the domain is connected or the external temperature profile is constant, the optimal insulating layer fails to cover the entire boundary whenever the total mass is sufficiently small.

This is shown to be optimal: an explicit example provides that a disconnected boundary can trigger an anomalous double-phase transition, causing the insulation to fracture again even at intermediate mass regimes.