Existence of weak positive solutions to a nonlinear PDE system around a triple phase boundary, coupling domain and boundary variables

We consider a 2D nonlinear system of PDEs representing a simplified model of processes near a triple-phase boundary (TPB) in cathode catalyst layer of hydrogen fuel cells. The particularity of this system is the coupling of a variable satisfying a PDE in the interior of the domain with another variable satisfying a differential equation (DE) defined only on the boundary, through an adsorption–desorption equilibrium mechanism. The system includes also an isolated singular boundary condition which models the flux continuity at the contact of the TPB with a subdomain. By freezing certain terms we transform the nonlinear PDE system to an equation, which has a variational formulation. We prove several L ∞ and W 1 , p a priori estimates and then by using Schauder fixed point theorem we prove the existence of a weak positive bounded solution.