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Mechanical behavior of layered materials and structures greatly depends on the mechanical behavior of interfaces. In the past decades, the failure in such layered media has been studied by many researchers due to their critical role in the mechanics and physics of solids. This study aims at investigating crack-interface interaction in two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) layered media by a phase field model. Our objectives are fourfold: (a) to better understand fracture behavior in layered heterogeneous systems under quasi-static load; (b) to introduce a new methodology for better describing interfaces by a regularized interfacial transition zone in the context of variational phase field approach, exploring its important role; (c) to show the accuracy, performance and applicability of the present model in modeling material failure at the interfaces in both 2-D and 3-D bodies; and (d) to quantitatively validate computed crack path with respect to experimental data. Phase field models with both perfectly and cohesive bonded interfaces are thus derived. A regularized interfacial transition zone is introduced to capture characteristics of material mismatch at the interfaces. Numerical examples for 2-D and 3-D layered systems with experimental validation provide fundamentals of fracture behavior in layered structures. The obtained results shed light on the behavior of crack paths, which are drastically affected by the elastic modulus mismatch between two layers and interface types, and reveal the important role of the proposed interfacial transition zone in phase field modeling of crack-interface interactions.

We present a numerical scheme that preserves the total energy and the entropy production rate, termed the energy and entropy production rate preserving scheme, for a general class of thermodynamically consistent phase field models for dendritic crystal growth derived from the first and second law of thermodynamics. The scheme is second order in time, linear and energy and entropy production rate preserving for any time steps. The scheme is first discretized in time aided by the energy quadratization (EQ) method and then in space using compact finite difference methods. The linear system resulting from the scheme is shown to be uniquely solvable at both the semi-discrete and the fully discrete level. Mesh refinement tests are performed to show the second-order time convergence rate in the scheme. Several numerical examples of dendritic crystal growth are provided to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the scheme. The effects of various model parameters on growth patterns of the crystal are further investigated in details with the numerical solver. The approach to developing the energy and entropy production rate-preserving numerical scheme proposed in this study is so general that it can be applied to a wide range of thermodynamically consistent models not limited to phase field models.

Quantitative phase-field models have been developed as feasible computational tools for solving the free-boundary problem in solidification processes. These models are constructed with some polynomials of the phase-field variable that describe variations of the physical quantities inside the diffuse interface. The accuracy of the simulation depends on the choice of the polynomials and such dependence is indispensable for high-performance computing and valuable for extending the range of applications of the model to several physical systems. However, little is known about the dependence of the accuracy on the choice of the polynomials. In this study, numerical testing is carried out for quantitative phase-field models with extensive sets of polynomials (24 different models) for isothermal solidification in binary alloys. It is demonstrated in two-dimensional simulations of dendritic growth that a specific set of polynomials must be employed to achieve high accuracy in the models with double-well and double-obstacle potentials. Both types of model with the best set of polynomials yield almost the same numerical accuracy. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Phase field models are widely used to describe the two-phase system. The evolution of the phase field variables is usually driven by the gradient flow of a total free energy functional. The generalization of the approach to an N phase ( N ź 3 ) system requires some extra consistency conditions on the free energy functional in order for the model to give physically relevant results. A projection approach is proposed for the derivation of a consistent free energy functional for the three-phase Cahn-Hilliard equations. The system is then coupled with the Navier-Stokes equations to describe the three-phase flow on solid surfaces with moving contact line. An energy stable scheme is developed for the three-phase flow system. The discrete energy law of the numerical scheme is proved which ensures the stability of the scheme. We also show some numerical results for the dynamics of triple junctions and four phase contact lines.

In this paper we develop a fully adaptive energy stable scheme for Cahn-Hilliard Navier-Stokes system, which is a phase-field model for two-phase incompressible flows, consisting a Cahn-Hilliard-type diffusion equation and a Navier-Stokes equation. This scheme, which is decoupled and unconditionally energy stable based on stabilization, involves adaptive mesh, adaptive time and a nonlinear multigrid finite difference method. Numerical experiments are carried out to validate the scheme for problems with matched density and non-matched density, and also demonstrate that CPU time can be significantly reduced with our adaptive approach.

Lattice Boltzmann Models (LBM) and Phase Field Models (PFM) are two of the most widespread approaches for the numerical study of multicomponent fluid systems. Both methods have been successfully employed by several authors but, despite their popularity, still remains unclear how to properly compare them and how they perform on the same problem. Here we present a unified framework for the direct (one-to-one) comparison of the multicomponent LBM against the PFM. We provide analytical guidelines on how to compare the Shan-Chen (SC) lattice Boltzmann model for non-ideal multicomponent fluids with a corresponding free energy (FE) lattice Boltzmann model. Then, in order to properly compare the LBM vs. the PFM, we propose a new formulation for the free energy of the Cahn-Hilliard/Navier-Stokes equations. Finally, the LBM model is numerically compared with the corresponding phase field model solved by means of a pseudo-spectral algorithm. This work constitute a first attempt to set the basis for a quantitative comparison between different algorithms for multicomponent fluids. We limit our scope to the few of the most common variants of the two most widespread methodologies, namely the lattice Boltzmann model (SC and FE variants) and the Phase Field Model., 26 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to J. Comp. Phys

We use the idea in [33] to develop the energy law preserving method and compute the diffusive interface (phase-field) models of Allen-Cahn and Cahn-Hilliard type, respectively, governing the motion of two-phase incompressible flows. We discretize these two models using a C^0 finite element in space and a modified midpoint scheme in time. To increase the stability in the pressure variable we treat the divergence free condition by a penalty formulation, under which the discrete energy law can still be derived for these diffusive interface models. Through an example we demonstrate that the energy law preserving method is beneficial for computing these multi-phase flow models. We also demonstrate that when applying the energy law preserving method to the model of Cahn-Hilliard type, un-physical interfacial oscillations may occur. We examine the source of such oscillations and a remedy is presented to eliminate the oscillations. A few two-phase incompressible flow examples are computed to show the good performance of our method.

We introduce provably unconditionally stable mixed variational methods for phase-field models. Our formulation is based on a mixed finite element method for space discretization and a new second-order accurate time integration algorithm. The fully-discrete formulation inherits the main characteristics of conserved phase dynamics, namely, mass conservation and nonlinear stability with respect to the free energy. We illustrate the theory with the Cahn-Hilliard equation, but our method may be applied to other phase-field models. We also propose an adaptive time-stepping version of the new time integration method. We present some numerical examples that show the accuracy, stability and robustness of the new method.

In this paper, we discuss a simple iterative-perturbation scheme for solving the elasticity equation in systems with strong elastic inhomogeneity. As an example, a thin film in contact with a gas and a substrate is considered. The scheme is demonstrated to be efficient through numerical experiments and reliable through rigorous mathematical justification. It is then applied to the study of the inhomogeneous shear modulus effect on the microstructure evolution in thin films based on the phase-field method.

Phase field models offer a systematic physical approach for investigating complex multiphase systems behaviors such as near-critical interfacial phenomena, phase separation under shear, and microstructure evolution during solidification. However, because interfaces are replaced by thin transition regions (diffuse interfaces), phase field simulations require resolution of very thin layers to capture the physics of the problems studied. This demands robust numerical methods that can efficiently achieve high resolution and accuracy, especially in three dimensions. We present here an accurate and efficient numerical method to solve the coupled Cahn-Hilliard/Navier-Stokes system, known as Model H, that constitutes a phase field model for density-matched binary fluids with variable mobility and viscosity. The numerical method is a time-split scheme that combines a novel semi-implicit discretization for the convective Cahn-Hilliard equation with an innovative application of high-resolution schemes employed for direct numerical simulations of turbulence. This new semi-implicit discretization is simple but effective since it removes the stability constraint due to the nonlinearity of the Cahn-Hilliard equation at the same cost as that of an explicit scheme. It is derived from a discretization used for diffusive problems that we further enhance to efficiently solve flow problems with variable mobility and viscosity. Moreover, we solve the Navier-Stokes equations with a robust time-discretization of the projection method that guarantees better stability properties than those for Crank-Nicolson-based projection methods. For channel geometries, the method uses a spectral discretization in the streamwise and spanwise directions and a combination of spectral and high order compact finite difference discretizations in the wall normal direction. The capabilities of the method are demonstrated with several examples including phase separation with, and without, shear in two and three dimensions. The method effectively resolves interfacial layers of as few as three mesh points. The numerical examples show agreement with analytical solutions and scaling laws, where available, and the 3D simulations, in the presence of shear, reveal rich and complex structures, including strings.

Many physical problems are naturally formulated as nonlinear parabolic systems of partial differential equations in periodic geometry. In this paper, a simple, efficient, spectrally-accurate numerical method for these problems is described and implemented. The method combines stiff extrapolation with fast solvers for elliptic systems. Theory and numerical results show that the method solves even difficult problems including phase field models and mean curvature flows.