A high-fidelity finite volume scheme based on the BVD (boundary variation diminishing) principle is proposed in this study to solve ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations. A hybrid spatial reconstruction profile, based on a quadratic polynomial and a steepness-adjustable hyperbolic tangent function, is adopted to reproduce accurate solutions of complex magnetohydrodynamics flows. The BVD principle is used to find an optimal combination of these two types of functions by comparing variations between reconstructed interface values. Non-physical oscillations around discontinuities are removed by switching the quadratic polynomial to the step-shaped function. Additionally, an eight-wave method is applied in this study to control divergence errors of the magnetic field. The widely used numerical tests in one- and two-dimensional cases were checked in this study. The proposed scheme can achieve the accuracy of a third-order linear scheme in convergence tests for both advection and MHD equations and capture strong MHD shock waves without spurious oscillations. In comparison with a third-order WENO (weighted essentially non-oscillatory) scheme, the proposed one gains more accurate solutions for not only strong discontinuities but also smooth structures across scales. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to build a high-fidelity model for ideal MHD equations by the BVD algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate that the BVD algorithm has promising potential to build practical models for various MHD flows.
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