Convergent finite element approximations of surface evolution with relaxed minimal deformation
摘要
The finite element approximation of surface evolution under an external velocity field is studied. An artificial tangential motion is designed by using harmonic map heat flow from the initial surface onto the evolving surface. This makes the evolving surface have minimal deformation (up to certain relaxation) from the initial surface and therefore improves the mesh quality upon discretization. By exploiting and utilizing an intrinsic cancellation structure in this formulation and the role played by the relaxation term, convergence of the proposed method in approximating surface evolution in the three-dimensional space is proved for finite elements of degree