A second-order SO(3)-preserving and energy-stable scheme for orthonormal frame gradient flow model of biaxial nematic liquid crystals

In this paper, we present a novel second-order generalised rotational discrete gradient scheme for numerically approximating the orthonormal frame gradient flow of biaxial nematic liquid crystals. This scheme relies on reformulating the original gradient flow system into an equivalent generalised "rotational" form. A second-order discrete gradient approximation of the energy variation is then devised such that it satisfies an energy difference relation. The proposed numerical scheme has two remarkable properties: (i) it strictly obeys the orthonormal property of the tensor field and (ii) it satisfies the energy dissipation law at the discrete level, regardless of the time step sizes. We provide ample numerical results to validate the accuracy, efficiency, unconditional stability and SO(3)-preserving property of this scheme. In addition, comparisons of the simulation results between the biaxial orthonormal frame gradient flow model and uniaxial Oseen-Frank gradient flow are made to demonstrate the ability of the former to characterize non-axisymmetric local anisotropy.