Numerical analysis of an evolving bulk–surface model of tumour growth

Abstract This paper studies an evolving bulk–surface finite element method for a model of tissue growth, which is a modification of the model of Eyles, King and Styles (2019, A tractable mathematical model for tissue growth. Interfaces Free Bound, 21, 463–493). The model couples a Poisson equation on the domain with a forced mean curvature flow of the free boundary, with nontrivial bulk–surface coupling in both the velocity law of the evolving surface and the boundary condition of the Poisson equation. The numerical method discretizes evolution equations for the mean curvature and the outer normal and it uses a harmonic extension of the surface velocity into the bulk. The discretization admits a convergence analysis in the case of continuous finite elements of a polynomial degree at least 2. The stability of the discretized bulk–surface coupling is a major concern. The error analysis combines stability estimates and consistency estimates to yield optimal-order $H^{1}$-norm error bounds for the computed tissue pressure and for the surface position, velocity, normal vector and mean curvature. Numerical experiments illustrate and complement the theoretical results.