Keeping it together: A phase-field version of path-connectedness and its implementation

Abstract

We describe the implementation of a topological constraint in finite-element simulations of phase-field models, which ensures path-connectedness of preimages of intervals in the phase-field variable. The constraint takes the form of an energetic penalty for a suitable geodesic distance between all pairs of points in the domain. The main application of our method presented here is a discrete steepest descent of a phase-field version of a bending energy with spontaneous curvature and additional surface area penalty. This leads to disconnected surfaces without our topological constraint but connected surfaces with the constraint. Numerically, our constraint is treated by first transforming the double integral over all pairs of points in the domain to a weighted graph structure and then using Dijkstra’s algorithm to calculate the distance between discrete connected components.