Interface reconstruction with least-squares fit and split advection in three-dimensional Cartesian geometry

in this paper we present and analyze different volume-of-fluid (VOF) reconstruction and advection algorithms that approximate the interface separating two immiscible fluids in the three-dimensional space. The paper describes the improvement of the reconstruction when a least-square fit algorithm, which minimizes a distance functional, is applied. Its performance is tested for several smooth surfaces against other simple reconstruction methods. Then Eulerian, Lagrangian and mixed split advection schemes are presented and analyzed. In particular, one advection method is discussed that conserves mass exactly for a divergence-free velocity field, thus allowing computations to machine precision. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.