A linear, second-order, energy stable, fully adaptive finite element method for phase-field modelling of wetting phenomena

Abstract

We propose a new numerical method to solve the Cahn-Hilliard equation coupled with non-linear wetting boundary conditions. We show that the method is mass-conservative and that the discrete solution satisfies a discrete energy law similar to the one satisfied by the exact solution. We perform several tests inspired by realistic situations to verify the accuracy and performance of the method: wetting of a chemically heterogeneous substrate in three dimensions, wetting-driven nucleation in a complex two-dimensional domain and three-dimensional diffusion through a porous medium.