We consider local and nonlocal Cahn–Hilliard equations with constant mobility and singular potentials including, e.g., the Flory–Huggins potential, subject to no-flux (or periodic) boundary conditions. The main goal is to show that the presence of a suitable class of reaction terms allows to establish the existence of a weak solution to the corresponding initial and boundary value problem even though the initial condition is a pure state. This fact was already observed by the authors in a previous contribution devoted to a specific biological model. In this context, we examine the essential assumptions required for the reaction term to ensure the existence of a weak solution. Also, we explore the scenario involving the nonlocal Cahn–Hilliard equation and provide some illustrative examples that contextualize within our abstract framework.

We derive a class of Navier–Stokes–Cahn–Hilliard systems that models two-phase flows with mass transfer coupled to the process of chemotaxis. These thermodynamically consistent models can be seen as the natural Navier–Stokes analogues of earlier Cahn–Hilliard–Darcy models proposed for modelling tumour growth, and are derived based on a volume-averaged velocity, which yields simpler expressions compared to models derived based on a mass-averaged velocity. Then, we perform mathematical analysis on a simplified model variant with zero excess of total mass and equal densities. We establish the existence of global weak solutions in two and three dimensions for prescribed mass transfer terms. Under additional assumptions, we prove the global strong well-posedness in two dimensions with variable fluid viscosity and mobilities, which also includes a continuous dependence on initial data and mass transfer terms for the chemical potential and the order parameter in strong norms.

We consider a diffuse interface model for tumour growth consisting of a Cahn–Hilliard equation with source terms coupled to a reaction–diffusion equation. The coupled system of partial differential equations models a tumour growing in the presence of a nutrient species and surrounded by healthy tissue. The model also takes into account transport mechanisms such as chemotaxis and active transport. We establish well-posedness results for the tumour model and a variant with a quasi-static nutrient. It will turn out that the presence of the source terms in the Cahn–Hilliard equation leads to new difficulties when one aims to derive a priori estimates. However, we are able to prove continuous dependence on initial and boundary data for the chemical potential and for the order parameter in strong norms.

In this paper, we give exact solutions for the convective viscous Cahn--Hilliard equation. This equation with a general symmetric double-well potential and Burgers-type convective term was introduced by T. P. Witelski (1996 Studies in Applied Mathematics96, 277–300) to study the joint effects of nonlinear convection and viscosity. We consider this equation with a polynomial, generally asymmetric potential. We also consider both Burgers-type and cubic convective terms. We obtained exact travelling-wave solutions for both cases. For the former case, with an additional constraint on nonlinearity and viscosity, we also obtained an exact two-wave solution.

In this paper we propose a time discretization of a system of two parabolic equationsdescribing diffusion-driven atom rearrangement in crystalline matter. The equationsexpress the balances of microforces and microenergy; the two phase fields are the orderparameter and the chemical potential. The initial and boundary-value problem for theevolutionary system is known to be well posed. Convergence of the discrete scheme to thesolution of the continuous problem is proved by a careful development of uniformestimates, by weak compactness and a suitable treatment of nonlinearities. Moreover, forthe difference of discrete and continuous solutions we prove an error estimate of orderone with respect to the time step.

We derive a posteriori estimates for a discretization in space of the standardCahn–Hilliard equation with a double obstacle free energy.The derived estimates are robust and efficient, and in practice are combinedwith a heuristic time step adaptation. We present numerical experiments in two and three space dimensions and compareour method with an existing heuristic spatial mesh adaptation algorithm.