International Meeting on Free Boundary Problems, Theory and Applications, Trento (Italy), June 2002.
Ricardo H. Nochetto
Department of Mathematics
University of Maryland, College Park
College Park, MD 20742, USA
Surface diffusion is a (4th order highly nonlinear) geometric driven motion of a surface with normal velocity proportional to the surface Laplacian of mean curvature. We present a novel variational formulation for the parametric case, develop a finite element method, and propose a Schur complement approach to solve the resulting linear systems. We also introduce a new graph formulation and state an optimal a priori error estimate. We conclude with several significant simulations, some with pinch-off in finite time.