Weak solutions and incompressible limit of a quasi-incompressible Navier--Stokes/Cahn--Hilliard model for viscous two-phase flows

Abstract: We study a quasi-incompressible Navier--Stokes/Cahn--Hilliard coupled system which describes the motion of two macroscopically immiscible incompressible viscous fluids with partial mixing in a small interfacial region and long-range interactions. The case of unmatched densities with mass-averaged velocity is considered so that the velocity field is no longer divergence-free, and the pressure enters the equation of the chemical potential. We first prove the existence of global weak solutions to the model in a three-dimensional periodic domain, for which the implicit time discretization together with a fixed-point argument to the approximate system is employed. In particular, we obtain a new regularity estimate of the order parameter by exploiting the partial damping effect of the capillary force. Then utilizing the relative entropy method, we establish the incompressible limit -- the quasi-incompressible two-phase model converges to model H as the density difference tends to zero. Crucial to the passage of the incompressible limit, due to the lack of regularity of the pressure, are some non-standard uniform-in-density difference controls of the pressure, which are derived from the structure of the momentum equations and the improved regularity of the order parameter.