A decoupled energy stable scheme for a hydrodynamic phase-field model of mixtures of nematic liquid crystals and viscous fluids

We develop a linear, first-order, decoupled, energy-stable scheme for a binary hydrodynamic phase field model of mixtures of nematic liquid crystals and viscous fluids that satisfies an energy dissipation law. We show that the semi-discrete scheme in time satisfies an analogous, semi-discrete energy-dissipation law for any time-step and is therefore unconditionally stable. We then discretize the spatial operators in the scheme by a finite-difference method and implement the fully discrete scheme in a simplified version using CUDA on GPUs in 3 dimensions in space and time. Two numerical examples for rupture of nematic liquid crystal filaments immersed in a viscous fluid matrix are given, illustrating the effectiveness of this new scheme in resolving complex interfacial phenomena in free surface flows of nematic liquid crystals.