Numerical simulations of immiscible fluid clusters

Abstract

We present a phase field model for multi-component surface diffusion, which can be used to describe the evolution of clusters of immiscible fluids such as soap bubble clusters. The model is given by a Cahn–Hilliard system with a nonsmooth obstacle free energy and a degenerate mobility matrix. On stating the considered finite element approximation, we describe the iterative solver used to solve the nonlinear discrete system at each time step and present several numerical experiments for N = 3 , 4 , 5 and 6 components in two and three space dimensions, including simulations with topological changes.