2020/06/08 by Andrew Christlieb, Christlieb, Andrew, Keith Promislow +9
Engineering · Materials Science · #Catalytic Processes in Materials Science #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics and Thin Films #Numerical Analysis (math.NA) #Solidification and crystal growth phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.04784
openalex publication_date 2020/06/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Reductions of the self-consistent mean field theory model of amphiphilic molecules in solvent can lead to a singular family of functionalized Cahn-Hilliard energies. We modify these energies, mollifying the singularities to stabilize the computation of the gradient flows and develop a series of benchmark problems that emulate the "morphological complexity" observed in experiments. These benchmarks investigate the delicate balance between the rate of absorption of amphiphilic material onto an interface and a least energy mechanism to disperse the arriving mass. The result is a trichotomy of responses in which two-dimensional interfaces either lengthen by a regularized motion against curvature, undergo pearling bifurcations, or split directly into networks of interfaces. We evaluate a number of schemes that use second order BDF2-type time stepping coupled with Fourier pseudo-spectral spatial discretization. The BDF2-type schemes are either based on a fully implicit time discretization with a PSD nonlinear solver, or upon IMEX, SAV, ETD approaches. All schemes use a fixed local truncation error target with adaptive time-stepping to achieve the error target. Each scheme requires proper "preconditioning" to achieve robust performance that can enhance efficiency by several orders of magnitude.