A Temperature-Coupled Cahn-Hilliard-Stokes-Heat Model for Thermally Driven Phase Separation
We study a diffuse-interface model for thermally driven phase separation in viscous incompressible mixtures. The system couples a convective Cahn-Hilliard equation for the order parameter with a Stokes subsystem for the velocity-pressure field and a heat equation for the temperature. Temperature enters the bulk free energy through a Landau-type coefficient, while the phase field affects the flow through concentration-dependent density and viscosity. The model serves as a proxy for temperature-triggered condensation-like phase separation; humidity, latent heat, vapor pressure, and capillary forcing are absorbed into the choice of the threshold temperature $Θ_S$. We motivate the chemical potential through a temperature-dependent Landau free energy and use a regularized auxiliary formulation to prove local-in-time existence of weak solutions. For the numerical analysis, we employ a first-order sequential finite-element discretization of a simplified quasi-static formulation. The heat equation is advanced by implicit diffusion, the variable-coefficient Stokes problem is treated by a Taylor-Hood discretization, and the Cahn-Hilliard bulk derivative is evaluated at the previous time level, so each algebraic subproblem is linear. An isothermal diffusive test confirms mass conservation to roundoff and exhibits monotone discrete-energy decay for the tested parameters. Time-step and mesh-refinement studies show first-order temporal and approximately second-order spatial behavior. The remaining computations provide qualitative, parameter-specific illustrations; no global discrete energy law is claimed for the non-isothermal sequential scheme.