A new mathematical model for supercooling

In this article we study supercooling from a macroscopic point of view by m odeling the evolution of a supercooled body from its liquid state to its so lid state. A first model, which would be expected to have discontinuous sol utions, is regularized by introducing an intrinsic viscous dissipation. By applying the classical method of Faedo-Galerkin, this regularized model is shown to have a global smooth solution, which describes the state transitio n of the supercooled body approximately. (C) 2001 Academic Press.