Modeling and computation of two phase geometric biomembranes using surface finite elements

• Published in: Journal of computational physics Vol. 229; no. 18; pp. 6585 - 6612
• Main Authors: Elliott, Charles M., Stinner, Björn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Inc 01.09.2010; Elsevier
• Subjects: Computation; Computational techniques; Curvature; Evolution; Exact sciences and technology; Lipid bilayer; Lipids; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical methods in physics; Mathematical models; Multi-component membrane; Nonlinear dynamics; Numerical simulation; Phase field method; Phase separation; Physics; Relaxation dynamics; Surface finite element method; Lipid bilayer; Numerical simulation; Relaxation dynamics; Phase field method; Surface finite element method; Multi-component membrane; Second order; Total energy; Membranes; Equilibrium surface; Evolution equation; Finite element method; Phase function; Relaxation; Discretization; Functionals; Dynamics; Modelling; Calculation; Digital simulation; Free boundary problem; Calculation methods; Phase separation; Positions; Elliptic operator; Curvature
• ISSN: 0021-9991; 1090-2716
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2010.05.014

Biomembranes consisting of multiple lipids may involve phase separation phenomena leading to coexisting domains of different lipid compositions. The modeling of such biomembranes involves an elastic or bending energy together with a line energy associated with the phase interfaces. This leads to a free boundary problem for the phase interface on the unknown equilibrium surface which minimizes an energy functional subject to volume and area constraints. In this paper we propose a new computational tool for computing equilibria based on an L 2 relaxation flow for the total energy in which the line energy is approximated by a surface Ginzburg–Landau phase field functional. The relaxation dynamics couple a nonlinear fourth order geometric evolution equation of Willmore flow type for the membrane with a surface Allen–Cahn equation describing the lateral decomposition. A novel system is derived involving second order elliptic operators where the field variables are the positions of material points of the surface, the mean curvature vector and the surface phase field function. The resulting variational formulation uses H 1 spaces, and we employ triangulated surfaces and H 1 conforming quadratic surface finite elements for approximating solutions. Together with a semi-implicit time discretization of the evolution equations an iterative scheme is obtained essentially requiring linear solvers only. Numerical experiments are presented which exhibit convergence and the power of this new method for two component geometric biomembranes by computing equilibria such as dumbbells, discocytes and starfishes with lateral phase separation.