Analysis and Numerical Approximation of Energy-Variational Solutions to the Ericksen–Leslie Equations

Abstract

We define the concept of energy-variational solutions for the Ericksen–Leslie equations in three spatial dimensions. This solution concept is finer than dissipative solutions and satisfies the weak-strong uniqueness property. For a certain choice of the regularity weight, the existence of energy-variational solutions implies the existence of measure-valued solutions and for a different choice, we construct an energy-variational solution with the help of an implementable, structure-inheriting space-time discretization. Computational studies are performed in order to provide some evidence of the applicability of the proposed algorithm.