src/examples/brusselator.c

    Coupled reaction–diffusion equations

    The Brusselator is a theoretical model for a type of autocatalytic reaction. The Brusselator model was proposed by Ilya Prigogine and his collaborators at the Free University of Brussels.

    Two chemical compounds with concentrations C_1 and C_2 interact according to the coupled reaction–diffusion equations: \displaystyle \partial_t C_1 = \nabla^2 C_1 + k(ka - (kb + 1)C_1 + C_1^2 C_2) \displaystyle \partial_t C_2 = D \nabla^2 C_2 + k(kb C_1 - C_1^2 C_2)

    We will use a Cartesian (multi)grid, the generic time loop and the time-implicit diffusion solver.

    #include "grid/multigrid.h"
    #include "run.h"
    #include "diffusion.h"

    We need scalar fields for the concentrations.

    scalar C1[], C2[];

    We use the same parameters as Pena and Perez-Garcia, 2001

    double k = 1., ka = 4.5, D = 8.;
    double mu, kb;

    The generic time loop needs a timestep. We will store the statistics on the diffusion solvers in mgd1 and mgd2.

    double dt;
    mgstats mgd1, mgd2;

    Parameters

    We change the size of the domain L0 and set the tolerance of the implicit diffusion solver.

    int main()
    {
      init_grid (128);
      size (64);
      TOLERANCE = 1e-4;

    Here \mu is the control parameter. For \mu > 0 the system is supercritical (Hopf bifurcation). We test several values of \mu.

      mu = 0.04; run();
      mu = 0.1;  run();
      mu = 0.98; run();
    }

    Initial conditions

    event init (i = 0)
    {

    The marginal stability is obtained for kb = kbcrit.

      double nu = sqrt(1./D);
      double kbcrit = sq(1. + ka*nu);
      kb = kbcrit*(1. + mu);

    The (unstable) stationary solution is C_1 = ka and C_2 = kb/ka. It is perturbed by a random noise in [-0.01:0.01].

      foreach() {
        C1[] = ka ; 
        C2[] = kb/ka + 0.01*noise();
      }
    }

    Outputs

    Here we create an mpeg animation of the C_1 concentration. The spread parameter sets the color scale to \pm twice the standard deviation.

    event movie (i = 1; i += 10)
    {
      output_ppm (C1, linear = true, spread = 2, file = "f.mp4", n = 200);
      fprintf (stderr, "%d %g %g %d %d\n", i, t, dt, mgd1.i, mgd2.i);
    }

    We make a PNG image of the final “pseudo-stationary” solution.

    event final (t = 3000)
    {
      char name[80];
      sprintf (name, "mu-%g.png", mu);
      output_ppm (C1, file = name, n = 200, linear = true, spread = 2);
    }

    Time integration

    We first set the timestep according to the timing of upcoming events. We choose a maximum timestep of 1 which ensures the stability of the reactive terms for this example.

      dt = dtnext (1.);

    We can rewrite the evolution equations as \displaystyle \partial_t C_1 = \nabla^2 C_1 + k k_a + k (C_1 C_2 - k_b - 1) C_1 \displaystyle \partial_t C_2 = D \nabla^2 C_2 + k k_b C_1 - k C_1^2 C_2 And use the diffusion solver to advance the system from t to t+dt.

      scalar r[], beta[];
      
      foreach() {
        r[] = k*ka;
        beta[] = k*(C1[]*C2[] - kb - 1.);
      }
      mgd1 = diffusion (C1, dt, r = r, beta = beta);
      foreach() {
        r[] = k*kb*C1[];
        beta[] = - k*sq(C1[]);
      }
      const face vector c[] = {D, D};
      mgd2 = diffusion (C2, dt, c, r, beta);
    }

    Results

    We get the following stable Turing patterns.

    \mu=0.04 \mu=0.1 (stripes) \mu=0.98 (hexagons)

    Animation of the transitions