Relaxation schemes for curvature-dependent front propagation

In this paper we study analytically and numerically a novel relaxation approximation for front evolution according to a curvature-dependent local law. In the Chapman-Enskog expansion, this relaxation approximation leads to the level-set equation for transport-dominated front propagation, which includes the mean curvature as the next-order term. This approach yields a new and possibly attractive way of calculating numerically the propagation of curvature-dependent fronts. Since the relaxation system is a symmetrizable, semilinear, and linearly convective hyperbolic system without singularities, the relaxation scheme captures the curvature-dependent front propagation without discretizing directly the complicated yet singular mean curvature term