A Robust Solver for a Mixed Finite Element Method for the Cahn-Hilliard Equation

Susanne C. Brenner, Amanda E. Diegel, Li-Yeng Sung

Published 2017-09-12Version 1

We develop a robust solver for a mixed finite element convex splitting scheme for the Cahn-Hilliard equation. The key ingredient of the solver is a preconditioned minimal residual algorithm (with a multigrid preconditioner) whose performance is independent of the spacial mesh size and the time step size for a given interfacial width parameter. The dependence on the interfacial width parameter is also mild.