Numerical solution of a phase field model for polycrystallization processes in binary mixtures

We consider the numerical solution of a phase field model for polycrystallization in the solidification of binary mixtures in a domain \( \varOmega \subset \mathbb {R}^2\). The model is based on a free energy in terms of three order parameters: the local orientation \(\varTheta \) of the crystals, the local crystallinity \(\phi \), and the concentration c of one of the components of the binary mixture. The equations of motion are given by an initial-boundary value problem for a coupled system of partial differential equations consisting of a regularized second order total variation flow in \( \varTheta \), an \(L^2\) gradient flow in \(\phi \), and a \(W^{1,2}(\varOmega )^*\) gradient flow in c. Based on an implicit discretization in time by the backward Euler scheme, we suggest a splitting method such that the three semidiscretized equations can be solved separately and prove existence of a solution. As far as the discretization in space is concerned, the fourth order Cahn–Hilliard type equation in c is taken care of by a \(\hbox {C}^0\) Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin approximation which has the advantage that the same finite element space can be used as well for the spatial discretization of the equations in \( \varTheta \) and \( \phi \). The fully discretized equations represent parameter dependent nonlinear algebraic systems with the discrete time as a parameter. They are solved by a predictor corrector continuation strategy featuring an adaptive choice of the time-step. Numerical results illustrate the performance of the suggested numerical method.