1 research outputs found
A Continuation Method for Computing Constant Mean Curvature Surfaces with Boundary
Defined mathematically as critical points of surface area subject to a volume
constraint, constant mean curvatures (CMC) surfaces are idealizations of
interfaces occurring between two immiscible fluids. Their behavior elucidates
phenomena seen in many microscale systems of applied science and engineering;
however, explicitly computing the shapes of CMC surfaces is often impossible,
especially when the boundary of the interface is fixed and parameters, such as
the volume enclosed by the surface, vary. In this work, we propose a novel
method for computing discrete versions of CMC surfaces based on solving a
quasilinear, elliptic partial differential equation that is derived from
writing the unknown surface as a normal graph over another known CMC surface.
The partial differential equation is then solved using an arc-length
continuation algorithm, and the resulting algorithm produces a continuous
family of CMC surfaces for varying volume whose physical stability is known. In
addition to providing details of the algorithm, various test examples are
presented to highlight the efficacy, accuracy and robustness of the proposed
approach.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure