Error analysis of a finite element method for the Willmore flow of graphs (Q2496510)

The evolution of two dimensional surfaces in \(\mathbb R^3\) under Willmore flow is considered in this paper. First the Willmore functional and Willmore flow problem is derived. This problem is investigated for surfaces \(\Gamma(t)\) that can be represent as a graphs over some bounded domain \( \Omega \) in \(\mathbb R^2\) in the form: \[ \Gamma(t)=\{ (x,u(x,t))\mid x \in \Omega \} \] oriented by the unit normal field \[ \nu = {(\nabla u,-1)\over\sqrt{1+\nabla u| ^2},} \] where \(\nabla u =(u_{x1}, u_{x2}).\) In this case the problem can be transformed to the fourth order parabolic problem of unknown variable \(u(x,t)\) with Dirichlet boundary conditions and prescribed initial condition. Variational formulation of a solution is derived and the problem is transformed to two coupled second order PDEs with height and weighted mean curvature as variables of the system. Space semidiscretization by finite element method of this problem is proposed. For this numerical solution the uniqueness is proved and then error analysis under some regularity assumptions for continuous solution is proposed. Then fully discrete scheme as a semi-implicit discretization is presented. Using this scheme some numerical examples conclude the paper. This numerical computations confirm the theoretical results obtained for proposed numerical scheme.