Modeling multiphase fields with a single phase parameter

  • Acar, Ruyam (-)

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Conventional approach [1-5] for the solution of multi-phase field modeling is based on representing each phase as a separate component. Free energy functional is computed as a sum of individual energies and consequently minimization of the free energy results in the evolution of N phase field equations (where N is a predefined number of components). The main issue with this approach is to maintain the physical consistency of the overall system of equations. As a result, the primary focus of the related work has been to satisfy the "consistency conditions" (as formally listed in [2]) which are necessary to maintain the evolution of N equations intact and physically consistent. Several numerical solutions have been proposed [1-3] to fulfill these conditions some of which are physically unrealistic. The physics of multi-component interfaces can be very complex. The main challenge in modeling multi-phase fields comes from the lack of a general theory for N-component junctions, mostly due to incomplete knowledge of the phase field interactions at the micro-scale. In this work, we propose a solution for multi-phase field modeling based on a "one parameter" representation and evolution of one equation. Distinct phase components are represented by different intervals of the phase parameter and the necessary phase information is obtained at each step of the evolution from the phase image. Our goal is to provide a framework which allows modeling of the interfacial energy freely and a system which allows adaptation of different energy landscapes such as those obtained from experimental data. There are two key points to our approach. First is the detection of nearest phase values accurately at each point in diffuse regions. For this we developed an adaptive morphological algorithm based on the gradient surface properties of diffuse regions. The second key point is the energy design in diffuse regions (in both binary interfaces and junctions) in a physically consistent way. For this, we developed an algorithm which makes use of the geometric and diffuse properties of the phase parameter. We have tested our method for the case of isotropic diffusion and energy on several experiments with arbitrary number of phase components. Our results show the physically consistent evolution of the phase parameter providing the following features: energy minimization, mass conservation, validation of Young's law at triple junctions