A symmetrized parametric finite element method for anisotropic surface diffusion in 3D

Abstract: For the evolution of a closed surface under anisotropic surface diffusion with a general anisotropic surface energy $\gamma(\boldsymbol{n})$ in three dimensions (3D), where $\boldsymbol{n}$ is the unit outward normal vector, by introducing a novel symmetric positive definite surface energy matrix $\boldsymbol{Z}_k(\boldsymbol{n})$ depending on a stabilizing function $k(\boldsymbol{n})$ and the Cahn-Hoffman $\boldsymbol{\xi}$-vector, we present a new symmetrized variational formulation for anisotropic surface diffusion with weakly or strongly anisotropic surface energy, which preserves two important structures including volume conservation and energy dissipation. Then we propose a structural-preserving parametric finite element method (SP-PFEM) to discretize the symmetrized variational problem, which preserves the volume in the discretized level. Under a relatively mild and simple condition on $\gamma(\boldsymbol{n})$, we show that SP-PFEM is unconditionally energy-stable for almost all anisotropic surface energies $\gamma(\boldsymbol{n})$ arising in practical applications. Extensive numerical results are reported to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy as well as energy dissipation of the proposed SP-PFEM for solving anisotropic surface diffusion in 3D.