Metastable internal layer dynamics for the viscous Cahn-Hilliard equation (Q1907278)

The authors study the one-dimensional viscous Cahn-Hilliard equation modeling slow phase separation of a binary mixture. In dimensionless variables, this model is given by \(u_t+(\varepsilon^2u_{xx}+Q(u)-ku_t)_{xx}=0\), where \(u\) is the concentration of one of the two species, \(\varepsilon\ll 1\) is an interfacial energy parameter, and \(k\) is the viscosity coefficient. For \(\varepsilon\to 0\), a formal asymptotic method is used to derive a differential-algebraic system of equations for the locations of internal layers. These asymptotic results are compared with corresponding numerical results.