An energy-stable finite-difference scheme for the binary fluid-surfactant system

We present an unconditionally energy stable finite-difference scheme for the binary fluid-surfactant system. The proposed method is based on the convex splitting of the energy functional with two variables. Here are two distinct features: (i) the convex splitting energy method is applied to energy functional with two variables, and (ii) the stability issue is related to the decay of the corresponding energy. The full discrete scheme leads to a decoupled system including a linear sub-system and a nonlinear sub-system. Algebraic multigrid and Newton-multigrid methods are adopted to solve the linear and nonlinear systems, respectively. Numerical experiments are shown to verify the stability of such a scheme. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.