Construction of several second- and fourth-order geometric partial differential equations for space curves

•Several second- and fourth-order geometric partial differential equations for space curves are constructed.•Changing rates of the arc-length of the evolved curves and areas swept by the curves are discussed.•Short-term and long-term behaviors of the evolved curves are illustrated.

Geometric partial differential equations for curves and surfaces are used in many fields, such as computational geometry, image processing and computer graphics. In this paper, a few differential operators defined on space curves are introduced. Based on these operators, several second-order and fourth-order geometric flows for evolving space curves are constructed. Some properties of the changing rates of the arc-length of the evolved curves and areas swept by the curves are discussed. Short-term and long-term behaviors of the evolved curves are illustrated.