Variational Approximation for a Non-Isothermal Coupled Phase-Field System: Structure-Preservation & Nonlinear Stability

A Cahn–Hilliard–Allen–Cahn phase-field model coupled with a heat transfer equation, particularly with full non-diagonal mobility matrices, is studied. After reformulating the problem with respect to the inverse of temperature, we proposed and analysed a structure-preserving approximation for the semi-discretisation in space and then a fully discrete approximation using conforming finite elements and time-stepping methods. We prove structure-preserving property and discrete stability using relative entropy methods for the semi-discrete and fully discrete case. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical experiments.