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We prove the existence and uniqueness of a solution of a C⁰Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin (C⁰IPDG) method for the numerical solution of a fourth‐order total variation flow problem that has been developed in part I of the paper. The proof relies on a nonlinear version of the Lax‐Milgram Lemma. It requires to establish that the nonlinear operator associated with the C⁰IPDG approximation is Lipschitz continuous and strongly monotone on bounded sets of the underlying finite element space.

We consider the numerical solution of a fourth‐order total variation flow problem representing surface relaxation below the roughening temperature. Based on a regularization and scaling of the nonlinear fourth‐order parabolic equation, we perform an implicit discretization in time and a C⁰Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin (C⁰IPDG) discretization in space. The C⁰IPDG approximation can be derived from a mixed formulation involving numerical flux functions where an appropriate choice of the flux functions allows to eliminate the discrete dual variable. The fully discrete problem can be interpreted as a parameter dependent nonlinear system with the discrete time as a parameter. It is solved by a predictor corrector continuation strategy featuring an adaptive choice of the time step sizes. A documentation of numerical results is provided illustrating the performance of the C⁰IPDG method and the predictor corrector continuation strategy. The existence and uniqueness of a solution of the C⁰IPDG method will be shown in the second part of this paper.