Transition of Liesegang precipitation systems: simulations with an adaptive grid PDE method

The dynamics of the Liesegang type pattern formation is investigated in a centrally symmetric two-dimensional setup. According to the observations in real experiments, the qualitative change of the dynamics is exhibited for slightly different initial conditions. Two kinds of chemical mechanisms are studied; in both cases the pattern formation is described using a phase separation model including the Cahn-Hilliard equations. For the numerical simulations we make use of a recent adaptive grid PDE method, which successfully deals with the computationally critical cases such as steep gradients in the concentration distribution and investigation of long time behavior. The numerical simulations show a good agreement with the real experiments