Decoupled, energy stable schemes for a phase-field surfactant model

Guangpu Zhu, Jisheng Kou, Shuyu Sun*, Jun Yao, Aifen Li

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

54 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we construct several linear, decoupled and energy stable schemes for a phase-field surfactant model, in which the free energy functional contains a fourth-order Ginzburg–Landau double well potential, a logarithmic Flory–Huggins potential and two nonlinear coupling terms. Several scalar auxiliary variables (SAV) are introduced to transform the governing system into an equivalent form, allowing the nonlinear potentials to be treated efficiently and semi-explicitly. At each time step, the schemes involve solving only two linear elliptic differential equations, and computations of two phase-field variables are totally decoupled. Moreover, the local concentration of surfactants can be obtained in an “explicit” way. We further establish a rigorous proof of unconditional energy stability for the semi-implicit schemes. Numerical results in both two and three dimensions are obtained, which demonstrate that the proposed schemes are accurate, efficient, easy-to-implement and unconditionally energy stable.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)67-77
Number of pages11
JournalComputer Physics Communications
Volume233
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2018

Keywords

  • Cahn–Hilliard
  • Energy stability
  • Fluid-surfactant
  • Phase-field
  • Scalar auxiliary variable

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Hardware and Architecture
  • General Physics and Astronomy

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