The Allen-Cahn equation with dynamic boundary conditions and mass constraints

The Allen-Cahn equation, coupled with dynamic boundary conditions, has recently received a good deal of attention. The new issue of this paper is the setting of a rather general mass constraint, which may involve either the solution inside the domain or its trace on the boundary. The system of nonlinear partial differential equations can be formulated as a variational inequality. The presence of the constraint in the evolution process leads to additional terms in the equation and the boundary condition containing a suitable Lagrange multiplier. A well-posedness result is proved for the related initial value problem. Copyright (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.