Convergence analysis of decoupled mixed FEM for the Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract: We develop a decoupled, first-order, fully discrete, energy-stable scheme for the Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes equations. This scheme calculates the Cahn-Hilliard and Navier-Stokes equations separately, thus effectively decoupling the entire system. To further separate the velocity and pressure components in the Navier-Stokes equations, we use the pressure-correction projection method. We demonstrate that the scheme is primitively energy stable and prove the optimal $L^2$ error estimate of the fully discrete scheme in the $P_r\times P_r\times P_r\times P_{r-1}$ finite element spaces, where the phase field, chemical potential, velocity and pressure satisfy the first-order accuracy in time and the $\left(r+1,r+1,r+1,r\right)th$-order accuracy in space, respectively. Furthermore, numerical experiments are conducted to support these theoretical findings. Notably, compared to other numerical schemes, our algorithm is more time-efficient and numerically shown to be unconditionally stable.