An arbitrarily high-order three-dimensional Cartesian-grid method for reconstructing interfaces from volume fraction fields

Abstract

This work describes a newly developed, arbitrarily high-order Cartesian-grid method for reconstructing material interfaces from a volume fraction field. The method begins by identifying all of the grid cells in the volume fraction field that are intersected by the interface and need to be approximated by the reconstruction scheme. Finite-differences are used to calculate the gradient of the volume fraction field and provide an estimate of the surface normal in all of the interfacial grid cells. Groups of connected grid cells are then identified which all have the same dominant component of the normal vector. This grouping by orientation determines the proper dependent variable to use in the surface reconstruction (e.g. for a 2D curve, this step determines if the surface will be approximated by a function of x or y). A cumulative integral over the surface is constructed and fit using b-splines for two-dimensional problems or tensor-product b-splines for three-dimensional problems. This construction allows for the interface to be recovered through application of the second fundamental theorem of calculus. Fitting the cumulative integral with Nth-order b-splines (or tensor-product b-splines) yields an (N−1)th-order convergence rate of the interface shape. Differentiation of the b-spline interface function(s) allows for the high-order approximation of the normal vector and curvature to be obtained directly anywhere along b-spline. Together, the proposed reconstruction technique can achieve arbitrarily high mesh convergence rates. Validation tests are presented with mesh convergence rates ranging from fourth- to tenth-order.