Colliding interfaces in old and new diffuse-interface approximations of Willmore-flow

DOI10.4310/CMS.2014.V12.N1.A6MaRDI QIDQ2017235zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Selim Esedoḡlu, Andreas Rätz, Matthias Röger

Publication date 25 June 2014

Published in Communications in Mathematical Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1209.6531

zbMATH Keywords

Bellettini approximationdiffuse mean curvaturediffuse-interface approximationselastica energyGamma convergencegeometric evolution equationsLaplace-Beltrame operatornumerical simulationtopological changeWillmore flow

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Methods involving semicontinuity and convergence; relaxation (49J45) Numerical methods of relaxation type (49M20) Finite element methods applied to problems in solid mechanics (74S05) Finite difference methods applied to problems in solid mechanics (74S20)

Abstract: This paper is concerned with diffuse-interface approximations of the Willmore flow. We first present numerical results of standard diffuse-interface models for colliding one dimensional interfaces. In such a scenario evolutions towards interfaces with corners can occur that do not necessarily describe the adequate sharp-interface dynamics. We therefore propose and investigate alternative diffuse-interface approximations that lead to a different and more regular behavior if interfaces collide. These dynamics are derived from approximate energies that converge to the $L^1$-lower-semicontinuous envelope of the Willmore energy, which is in general not true for the more standard Willmore approximation.

Review text

This important paper is concerned with diffuse-interface approximations of the Willmore flow. One advantage of the diffuse-interface approach is that usually an automatic treatment of topological changes in a reasonable manner is guaranteed. It is however not always clear which (generalized) sharp-interface evolution is in fact approximated. The authors here present this issue in the case of the diffuse flow, in particular in situations where collisions between different interfaces occur and where these interfaces interact with each other. In applications such as image processing and computer vision, it is of great interest to compute the Willmore flow through such topological events. Main result: Numerical simulations with Bellettini's approximation are proposed. The authors provide numerical experiments in the plane with Bellettini's Gamma-convergent approximation, and investigate what happens at topological changes. In the interest of isolating potential numerical artifacts from inherent behavior of the Willmore flow that results from this approximation, the authors keep the numerical scheme as simple as possible: it is a straight-forward finite differences discretization, with explicit time stepping. Unsurprisingly, computations with this scheme are very slow, owing to the extremely stringent stability restriction on the time step size. However, they appear to be also very robust. In particular, a discrete form of the energy is observed to decrease at every time step. Due to the delicate nature of the question (topological changes in a fourth order gradient flow for a curvature dependent functional), the authors give full details of the implementation. For the standard diffuse approximation this work demonstrates that (at least in two dimensions) transversal intersections of diffuse interfaces are preferred.

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Cited in

(10)

• Phase-field approximation of the Willmore flow
• Isogeometric analysis for phase-field models of geometric PDEs and high-order PDEs on stationary and evolving surfaces
• Analysis of the diffuse domain method for second order elliptic boundary value problems
• Efficient and stable exponential time differencing Runge-Kutta methods for phase field elastic bending energy models
• Phase field models for two-phase flow with surfactants and biomembranes
• Phase-field approximations of the Willmore functional and flow
• A new diffuse-interface approximation of the Willmore flow
• Phase field models for thin elastic structures with topological constraint
• “Gradient-free” diffuse approximations of the Willmore functional and Willmore flow
• Learning the Willmore flow with a lightweight neural operator

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