  The study of tree sap exudation, in which a (leafless) tree generates
elevated stem pressure in response to repeated daily freeze-thaw cycles, gives
rise to an interesting multi-scale problem involving heat and multiphase
liquid/gas transport. The pressure generation mechanism is a cellular-level
process that is governed by differential equations for sap transport through
porous cell membranes, phase change, heat transport, and generation of osmotic
pressure. By assuming a periodic cellular structure based on an appropriate
reference cell, we derive an homogenized heat equation governing the global
temperature on the scale of the tree stem, with all the remaining physics
relegated to equations defined on the reference cell. We derive a corresponding
strong formulation of the limit problem and use it to design an efficient
numerical solution algorithm. Numerical simulations are then performed to
validate the results and draw conclusions regarding the phenomenon of sap
exudation, which is of great importance in trees such as sugar maple and a few
other related species. The particular form of our homogenized temperature
equation is obtained using periodic homogenization techniques with two-scale
convergence, which we investigate theoretically in the context of a simpler
two-phase Stefan-type problem corresponding to a periodic array of melting
cylindrical ice bars with a constant thermal diffusion coefficient. For this
reduced model, we prove results on existence, uniqueness and convergence of the
two-scale limit solution in the weak form, clearly identifying the missing
pieces required to extend the proofs to the fully nonlinear sap exudation
model. Numerical simulations of the reduced equations are then compared with
results from the complete sap exudation model.
