Tangential Navier-Stokes equations on evolving surfaces: Analysis and simulations

Abstract: The paper considers a system of equations that models a lateral flow of a Boussinesq--Scriven fluid on a passively evolving surface embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$. For the resulting Navier-Stokes type system, posed on a smooth closed time-dependent surface, we introduce a weak formulation in terms of functional spaces on a space-time manifold defined by the surface evolution. The weak formulation is shown to be well-posed for any finite final time and without smallness conditions on data. We further extend an unfitted finite element method, known as TraceFEM, to compute solutions to the fluid system. Convergence of the method is demonstrated numerically. In another series of experiments we visualize lateral flows induced by smooth deformations of a material surface.