A revised version of the paper has been published on Nonlinearity 30 (2017), 2518-2546. Let us point out that in this arXiv:1601.04567 [math.AP] version there is something missing in assumption (H3) at page 6: the first initial value in (H6) must also satisfy a Neumann homogeneous condition at the boundary of the domain
In this paper, a distributed optimal control problem is studied for a diffuse interface model of tumor growth which was proposed in [A. Hawkins-Daruud, K.G. van der Zee, J.T. Oden, Numerical simulation of a thermodynamically consistent four-species tumor growth model, Int. J. Numer. Math. Biomed. Engng. 28 (2011), 3-24]. The model consists of a Cahn-Hilliard equation for the tumor cell fraction coupled to a reaction-diffusion equation for a variable representing the nutrient-rich extracellular water volume fraction. The distributed control monitors as a right-hand side the reaction-diffusion equation and can be interpreted as a nutrient supply or a medication, while the cost function, which is of standard tracking type, is meant to keep the tumor cell fraction under control during the evolution. We show that the control-to-state operator is Frechet differentiable between appropriate Banach spaces and derive the first-order necessary optimality conditions in terms of a variational inequality involving the adjoint state variables.
We consider an optimal control problem for a diffuse interface model of tumor growth. The state equations couples a Cahn-Hilliard equation and a reaction-diffusion equation, which models the growth of a tumor in the presence of a nutrient and surrounded by host tissue. The introduction of cytotoxic drugs into the system serves to eliminate the tumor cells and in this setting the concentration of the cytotoxic drugs will act as the control variable. Furthermore, we allow the objective functional to depend on a free time variable, which represents the unknown treatment time to be optimized. As a…
In this paper, we study a distributed optimal control problem for a diffuse interface model for tumor growth. The model consists of a Cahn-Hilliard type equation for the phase field variable coupled to a reaction diffusion equation for the nutrient and a Brinkman type equation for the velocity. The system is equipped with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions for the tumor variable, the chemical potential and the nutrient as well as a "no-friction" boundary condition for the velocity. The control acts as a medication by cytotoxic drugs and enters the phase field equation. The cost functional…
We consider the asymptotic limit of a diffuse interface model for tumor-growth when a parameter $\varepsilon$ proportional to the thickness of the diffuse interface goes to zero. An approximate solution which shows explicitly the behavior of the true solution for small $\varepsilon$ will be constructed by using matched expansion method. Based on the energy method, a spectral condition in particular, we establish a smallness estimate of the difference between the approximate solution and the true solution.
In this paper we study the rigorous sharp interface limit of a diffuse interface model related to the dynamics of tumor growth, when a parameter $ε$, representing the interface thickness between the tumorous and non tumorous cells, tends to zero. More in particular, we analyze here a gradient-flow type model arising from a modification of the recently introduced model for tumor growth dynamics in [A. Hawkins-Daruud, K. G. van der Zee, J. T. Oden, Numerical simulation of a thermodynamically consistent four-species tumor growth model, Int. J. Numer. Math. Biomed. Engng. 28 (2011), 3--24.] (cf. a…
We discuss the sharp interface limit of a diffuse interface model for a coupled Cahn-Hilliard--Darcy system that models tumor growth when a certain parameter $\varepsilon>0$, related to the interface thickness, tends to zero. In particular, we prove that weak solutions to the related initial boundary value problem tend to varifold solutions of a corresponding sharp interface model when $\varepsilon$ goes to zero.
We consider a diffuse interface model for tumor growth recently proposed in [Y. Chen, S.M. Wise, V.B. Shenoy, J.S. Lowengrub, A stable scheme for a nonlinear, multiphase tumor growth model with an elastic membrane, Int. J. Numer. Methods Biomed. Eng., 30 (2014), 726-754]. In this new approach sharp interfaces are replaced by narrow transition layers arising due to adhesive forces among the cell species. Hence, a continuum thermodynamically consistent model is introduced. The resulting PDE system couples four different types of equations: a Cahn-Hilliard type equation for the tumor cells (which…
We consider a diffuse interface model of tumor growth proposed by A.~Hawkins-Daruud et al. This model consists of the Cahn-Hilliard equation for the tumor cell fraction $φ$ nonlinearly coupled with a reaction-diffusion equation for $ψ$, which represents the nutrient-rich extracellular water volume fraction. The coupling is expressed through a suitable proliferation function $p(φ)$ multiplied by the differences of the chemical potentials for $φ$ and $ψ$. The system is equipped with no-flux boundary conditions which entails the conservation of the total mass, that is, the spatial average of $φ+ψ…
We study a tumor growth model in two space dimensions, where proliferation of the tumor cells leads to expansion of the tumor domain and migration of surrounding normal tissues into the exterior vacuum. The model features two moving interfaces separating the tumor, the normal tissue, and the exterior vacuum. We prove local-in-time existence and uniqueness of strong solutions for their evolution starting from a nearly radial initial configuration. It is assumed that the tumor has lower mobility than the normal tissue, which is in line with the well-known Saffman-Taylor condition in viscous fing…
In this paper we study a tumor growth model with nutrients. The model presents dynamic patch solutions due to the contact inhibition among the tumor cells. We show that when the nutrients do not diffuse and the cells do not die, the tumor density exhibits regularizing dynamics. In particular, we provide contraction estimates, exponential rate of asymptotic convergence, and boundary regularity of the tumor patch. These results are in sharp contrast to the models either with nutrient diffusion or with death rate in tumor cells.
In this paper, we study a distributed optimal control problem for a diffuse interface model for tumor growth. The model consists of a Cahn-Hilliard type equation for the phase field variable coupled to a reaction diffusion equation for the nutrient and a Brinkman type equation for the velocity. The system is equipped with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions for the tumor variable and the chemical potential, Robin boundary conditions for the nutrient and a "no-friction" boundary condition for the velocity. The control acts as a medication by cytotoxic drugs and enters the phase field equati…
We consider the problem of the long time dynamics for a diffuse interface model for tumor growth. The model describes the growth of a tumor surrounded by host tissues in the presence of a nutrient and consists in a Cahn-Hilliard-type equation for the tumor phase coupled with a reaction-diffusion equation for the nutrient concentration. We prove that, under physically motivated assumptions on parameters and data, the corresponding initial-boundary value problem generates a dissipative dynamical system that admits the global attractor in a proper phase space.
We introduce here a new diffuse interface thermodynamically consistent non-isothermal model for tumor growth in presence of a nutrient in a domain $Ω\subset \mathbb{R}^3$. In particular our system describes the growth of a tumor surrounded by healthy tissues, taking into account changes of temperature, proliferation of cells, nutrient consumption and apoptosis. Our aim consists in proving an existence result for weak entropy solutions to our model.
We propose a diffuse interface model to describe tumor as a multicomponent deformable porous medium. We include mechanical effects in the model by coupling the mass balance equations for the tumor species and the nutrient dynamics to a mechanical equilibrium equation with phase-dependent elasticity coefficients. The resulting PDE system couples two Cahn--Hilliard type equations for the tumor phase and the healthy phase with a PDE linking the evolution of the interstitial fluid to the pressure of the system, a reaction-diffusion type equation for the nutrient proportion, and a quasistatic momen…
We give a rigorous proof of the approximability of the so-called Helfrich's functional via diffuse interfaces, under a constraint on the ratio between the bending rigidity and the Gauss-rigidity.
We discuss the sharp interface limit of a diffuse interface model for a two-phase flow of two partly miscible viscous Newtonian fluids of different densities, when a certain parameter ε>0 related to the interface thickness tends to zero. In the case that the mobility stays positive or tends to zero slower than linearly in εwe will prove that weak solutions tend to varifold solutions of a corresponding sharp interface model. But, if the mobility tends to zero faster than ε^3 we will show that certain radially symmetric solutions tend to functions, which will not satisfy the Young-Laplace law at…
Two-phase flow of two Newtonian incompressible viscous fluids with a soluble surfactant and different densities of the fluids can be modeled within the diffuse interface approach. We consider a Navier-Stokes/Cahn-Hilliard type system coupled to non-linear diffusion equations that describe the diffusion of the surfactant in the bulk phases as well as along the diffuse interface. Moreover, the surfactant concentration influences the free energy and therefore the surface tension of the diffuse interface. For this system existence of weak solutions globally in time for general initial data is prov…
The purpose of this paper is to derive anisotropic mean curvature flow as the limit of the anisotropic Allen-Cahn equation. We rely on distributional solution concepts for both the diffuse and sharp interface models, and prove convergence using relative entropy methods, which have recently proven to be a powerful tool in interface evolution problems. With the same relative entropy, we prove a weak-strong uniqueness result, which relies on the construction of gradient flow calibrations for our anisotropic energy functionals.
New diffuse interface and sharp interface models for soluble and insoluble surfactants fulfilling energy inequalities are introduced. We discuss their relation with the help of asymptotic analysis and present an existence result for a particular diffuse interface model.
In the present contribution we study the sliding mode control (SMC) problem for a diffuse interface tumor growth model coupling a viscous Cahn-Hilliard type equation for the phase variable with a reaction-diffusion equation for the nutrient. First, we prove the well-posedness and some regularity results for the state system modified by the state-feedback control law. Then, we show that the chosen SMC law forces the system to reach within finite time the sliding manifold (that we chose in order that the tumor phase remains constant in time). The feedback control law is added in the Cahn-Hilliar…
We prove convergence of suitable subsequences of weak solutions of a diffuse interface model for the two-phase flow of incompressible fluids with different densities with a nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation to weak solutions of the corresponding system with a standard "local" Cahn-Hilliard equation. The analysis is done in the case of a sufficiently smooth bounded domain with no-slip boundary condition for the velocity and Neumann boundary conditions for the Cahn-Hilliard equation. The proof is based on the corresponding result in the case of a single Cahn-Hilliard equation and compactness argum…
We prove existence of weak solutions for a diffuse interface model for the flow of two viscous incompressible Newtonian fluids with different densities in a bounded domain in two and three space dimensions. In contrast to previous works, we study a model with a singular non-local free energy, which controls the $H^{α/2}$-norm of the volume fraction. We show existence of weak solutions for large times with the aid of an implicit time discretization.
We investigate the convergence of solutions of a recently proposed diffuse interface/phase field model for cell blebbing by means of matched asymptotic expansions. It is a biological phenomenon that increasingly attracts attention by both experimental and theoretical communities. Key to understanding the process of cell blebbing mechanically are proteins that link the cell cortex and the cell membrane. Another important model component is the bending energy of the cell membrane and cell cortex which accounts for differential equations up to sixth order. Both aspects pose interesting mathematic…
Standard diffuse approximations of the Willmore flow often lead to intersecting phase boundaries that in many cases do not correspond to the intended sharp interface evolution. Here we introduce a new two-variable diffuse approximation that includes a rather simple but efficient penalization of the deviation from a quasi-one dimensional structure of the phase fields. We justify the approximation property by a Gamma convergence result for the energies and a matched asymptotic expansion for the flow. Ground states of the energy are shown to be one-dimensional, in contrast to the presence of sadd…
We extend previous weak well-posedness results obtained in Frigeri et al. (2017) concerning a non-local variant of a diffuse interface tumor model proposed by Hawkins-Daarud et al. (2012). The model consists of a non-local Cahn--Hilliard equation with degenerate mobility and singular potential for the phase field variable, coupled to a reaction-diffusion equation for the concentration of a nutrient. We prove the existence of strong solutions to the model and establish some high order continuous dependence estimates, even in the presence of concentration-dependent mobilities for the nutrient va…
We consider weak solutions for a diffuse interface model of two non-Newtonian viscous, incompressible fluids of power-law type in the case of different densities in a bounded, sufficiently smooth domain. This leads to a coupled system of a nonhomogenouos generalized Navier-Stokes system and a Cahn-Hilliard equation. For the Cahn-Hilliard part a smooth free energy density and a constant, positive mobility is assumed. Using the $L^\infty$-truncation method we prove existence of weak solutions for a power-law exponent $p>\frac{2d+2}{d+2}$, $d=2,3$.
We consider a model of a two phase flow proposed by Anderson, McFadden and Wheeler taking into account possible thermal fluctuations. The mathematical model consists of the compressible Navier-Stokes system coupled with the Cahn-Hilliard equation, where the latter is driven by a multiplicative temporal white noise accounting for thermal fluctuations. We show that existence of dissipative martingale solutions satisfying the associated total energy balance.
In this work, we present and analyze a mathematical model for tumor growth incorporating ECM erosion, interstitial flow, and the effect of vascular flow and nutrient transport. The model is of phase-field or diffused-interface type in which multiple phases of cell species and other constituents are separated by smooth evolving interfaces. The model involves a mesoscale version of Darcy's law to capture the flow mechanism in the tissue matrix. Modeling flow and transport processes in the vasculature supplying the healthy and cancerous tissue, one-dimensional (1D) equations are considered. Since…
Mathematical models that describe the tumor growth process have been formulated by several authors in order to understand how cancer develops and to develop new treatment approaches. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the long-time behavior of the two-phase diffuse-interface model, which was proposed in [11] to model a tumor tissue as a mixture of cancerous and healthy cells. Up to now, studies on the long-time behavior of this model have neglected chemotaxis and active transport, which have a significant effect on tumor growth. In this research, our main aim is to study this model with…
In this paper we study the well-posedness and long-time dynamics of a diffuse-interface model for the mixture of two viscous incompressible Newtonian fluids with thermo-induced Marangoni effects. The governing system consists of modified Navier--Stokes equations coupled with phase-field and energy transport equations. We first derive an energy inequality that illustrates the dissipative nature of the system under the assumption that the initial temperature variation is properly small. Then we establish the existence of weak/strong solutions via the energy method and discuss the long-time dynam…
We consider a phase field model for the flow of two partly miscible incompressible, viscous fluids of Non-Newtonian (power law) type. In the model it is assumed that the densities of the fluids are equal. We prove existence of weak solutions for general initial data and arbitrarily large times with the aid of a parabolic Lipschitz truncation method, which preserves solenoidal velocity fields and was recently developed by Breit, Diening, and Schwarzacher.
We consider a diffuse interface model for incompressible isothermal mixtures of two immiscible fluids with matched constant densities. This model consists of the Navier-Stokes system coupled with a convective nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation with non-constant mobility. We first prove the existence of a global weak solution in the case of non-degenerate mobilities and regular potentials of polynomial growth. Then we extend the result to degenerate mobilities and singular (e.g. logarithmic) potentials. In the latter case we also establish the existence of the global attractor in dimension two. Us…
We present a diffuse-interface model for the solid-state dewetting problem with anisotropic surface energies in ${\mathbb R}^d$ for $d\in\{2,3\}$. The introduced model consists of the anisotropic Cahn--Hilliard equation, with either a smooth or a double-obstacle potential, together with a degenerate mobility function and appropriate boundary conditions on the wall. Upon regularizing the introduced diffuse-interface model, and with the help of suitable asymptotic expansions, we recover as the sharp-interface limit the anisotropic surface diffusion flow for the interface together with an anisotr…
This article is devoted to the derivation and analysis of a system of partial differential equations modeling a diffuse interface flow of two Newtonian incompressible magnetic fluids. The system consists of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations coupled with an evolutionary equation for the magnetization vector and the Cahn-Hilliard equations. We show global in time existence of weak solutions to the system using the time discretization method.
A new diffuse interface model for a two-phase flow of two incompressible fluids with different densities is introduced using methods from rational continuum mechanics. The model fulfills local and global dissipation inequalities and is frame indifferent. Moreover, it is generalized to situations with a soluble species. Using the method of matched asymptotic expansions we derive various sharp interface models in the limit when the interfacial thickness tends to zero. Depending on the scaling of the mobility in the diffusion equation we either derive classical sharp interface models or models wh…
In this paper we study a free boundary problem for the growth of multi-layer tumors in necrotic phase. The tumor region is strip-like and divided into necrotic region and proliferating region with two free boundaries. The upper free boundary is tumor surface and governed by a Stefan condition. The lower free boundary is the interface separating necrotic region from proliferating region, its evolution is implicit and intrinsically governed by an obstacle problem. We prove that the problem has a unique flat stationary solution, and there exists a positive constant $γ_*$, such that the flat stati…
We study a diffuse interface model for the flow of two viscous incompressible Newtonian fluids in a bounded domain. The fluids are assumed to be macroscopically immiscible, but a partial mixing in a small interfacial region is assumed in the model. Moreover, diffusion of both components is taken into account. In contrast to previous works, we study a model for the general case that the fluids have different densities due to Lowengrub and Truskinovski. This leads to an inhomogeneous Navier-Stokes system coupled to a Cahn-Hilliard system, where the density of the mixture depends on the concentra…
A new diffuse interface model for a two-phase flow of two incompressible fluids with different densities is introduced using methods from rational continuum mechanics. The model fulfills local and global dissipation inequalities and is also generalized to situations with a soluble species. Using the method of matched asymptotic expansions we derive various sharp interface models in the limit when the interfacial thickness tends to zero. Depending on the scaling of the mobility in the diffusion equation we either derive classical sharp interface models or models where bulk or surface diffusion …
A system of partial differential equations for a diffusion interface model is considered for the stationary motion of two macroscopically immiscible, viscous Newtonian fluids in a three-dimensional bounded domain. The governing equations consist of the stationary Navier-Stokes equations for compressible fluids and a stationary Cahn-Hilliard type equation for the mass concentration difference. Approximate solutions are constructed through a two-level approximation procedure, and the limit of the sequence of approximate solutions is obtained by a weak convergence method. New ideas and estimates …
We prove existence of weak solutions for a diffuse interface model for the flow of two viscous incompressible Newtonian fluids in a bounded domain in two and three space dimensions. In contrast to previous works, we study a new model recently developed by Abels, Garcke, and Grün for fluids with different densities, which leads to a solenoidal velocity field. The model is given by a non-homogeneous Navier-Stokes system with a modified convective term coupled to a Cahn-Hilliard system. The density of the mixture depends on an order parameter.
In this paper we derive a class of thermodynamically consistent diffuse-interface mixture models of incompressible multicomponent fluids. The class of mixture models is fully compatible with the continuum theory of mixtures. The resulting mixture models may be formulated either in constituent or in mixture quantities. This permits a direct comparison with the Navier-Stokes Cahn-Hilliard model with non-matching densities, which reveals the key modeling simplifications of the latter.
Phase field models for two-phase flow with a surfactant soluble in possibly both fluids are derived from balance equations and an energy inequality so that thermodynamic consistency is guaranteed. Via a formal asymptotic analysis, they are related to sharp interface models. Both cases of dynamic as well as instantaneous adsorption are covered. Flexibility with respect to the choice of bulk and surface free energies allows to realise various isotherms and relations of state between surface tension and surfactant. Some numerical simulations display the effectiveness of the presented approach.
We study a diffuse interface model describing the motion of two viscous fluids driven by the surface tension in a Hele-Shaw cell. The full system consists of the Cahn-Hilliard equation coupled with the Darcy's law. We address the physically relevant case in which the two fluids have different viscosities (unmatched viscosities case) and the free energy density is the logarithmic Helmholtz potential. In dimension two we prove the uniqueness of weak solutions under a regularity criterion, and the existence and uniqueness of global strong solutions. In dimension three we show the existence and un…
We consider a diffuse interface model for tumor growth consisting of a Cahn--Hilliard equation with source terms coupled to a reaction-diffusion equation, which models a tumor growing in the presence of a nutrient species and surrounded by healthy tissue. The well-posedness of the system equipped with Neumann boundary conditions was found to require regular potentials with quadratic growth. In this work, Dirichlet boundary conditions are considered, and we establish the well-posedness of the system for regular potentials with higher polynomial growth and also for singular potentials. New diffi…
