Practical estimation of a splitting parameter for a spectral method for the ternary Cahn-Hilliard system with a logarithmic free energy

Abstract

We propose a practical estimation of a splitting parameter for a spectral method for the ternary Cahn-Hilliard system with a logarithmic free energy. We use Eyre's convex splitting scheme for the time discretization and a Fourier spectral method for the space variables. Given an absolute temperature, we find composition values that make the total free energy be minimum. Then, we find the splitting parameter value that makes the two split homogeneous free energies be convex on the neighborhood of the local minimum concentrations. For general use, we also propose a sixth-order polynomial approximation of the minimum concentration and derive a useful formula for the practical estimation of the splitting parameter in terms of the absolute temperature. The numerical tests are phase separation and total energy decrease with different temperature values. The linear stability analysis shows a good agreement between the exact and numerical solutions with an optimal value s. Various computational experiments confirm that the proposed splitting parameter estimation gives stable numerical results. Copyright (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.