Global existence of weak solutions to a two-phase diffuse interface model of ferrofluids dynamics

TL;DR

This paper proves the global existence of weak solutions for a complex two-phase ferrofluid model involving fluid dynamics, magnetization, and phase evolution, and also establishes convergence to a quasi-equilibrium state.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupled PDE system for ferrofluids that maintains an energy balance in singular limits and proves existence and convergence results for this system.

Findings

Existence of global weak solutions for the ferrofluid model.

Rigorous convergence to the quasi-equilibrium system.

Energy balance holds even in singular limits.

Abstract

Ferrofluids are a class of materials that exhibit both fluid and magnetic properties. We consider a two-phase diffuse interface model for the dynamics of ferrofluids on a bounded domain. One phase is assumed to be magnetic, the other phase can be magnetic or non-magnetic. We derive a coupled system of partial differential equations consisting of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, an evolution equation for the magnetization, the magnetostatics equations for the magnetic field and the Cahn-Hilliard equations for the evolution of the phase field variable, which are all coupled through various source terms and parameters. In contrast to similar models in the literature, the system in this work formally satisfies an energy balance which remains meaningful even in singular limits such as a limit of zero relaxation time. However, the formal derivation of this balance requires a delicate cancellation of several highly non-linear terms, making it challenging to ensure similar cancellations for approximating systems. Our first main result is to prove the existence of global weak solutions for our ferrofluid system based on a carefully constructed sequence of approximation steps. Additionally, we also study the relaxation towards the quasi-equilibrium, in which case the magnetization equation degenerates to a linear relation between the magnetic field and the magnetization. As our second main result, we prove the rigorous convergence to this limiting system.