THINC scaling method that bridges VOF and level set schemes

Abstract

We present a novel interface-capturing scheme, THINC-scaling, to unify the VOF (volume of fluid) and the level set methods, which have been developed as two different approaches widely used in various applications. The key to success is to maintain a high-quality THINC reconstruction function using the level set field to accurately retrieve geometrical information and the VOF field to fulfill numerical conservativeness. The interface is well defined as a surface in form of a high-order polynomial, so-called the polynomial surface of interface (PSI). The THINC reconstruction function is then used to update the VOF field via a finite volume method, and the level set field via a semi-Lagrangian method. Seeing the VOF field and the level set field as two different aspects of the THINC reconstruction function, the THINC-scaling scheme preserves at the same time the advantages of both VOF and level set methods, i.e. the mass/volume conservation of the VOF method and the geometrical faithfulness of the level set method, through a straightforward solution procedure. The THINC-scaling scheme allows to represent an interface with high-order polynomials and has algorithmic simplicity which largely eases its implementation in unstructured grids. Two and three dimensional algorithms in both structured and unstructured grids have been developed and verified. The numerical results reveal that the THINC-scaling scheme, as an interface capturing method, is able to provide high-fidelity solution comparable to other most advanced methods, and more profoundly it can resolve sub-grid filament structures if the interface is represented by a polynomial higher than second order.