A simple algebraic interface capturing scheme using hyperbolic tangent function

This paper presents a simple and practical scheme for capturing moving interfaces or free boundaries in multi-fluid simulations. The scheme, which is called THINC (tangent of hyperbola for interface capturing), makes use of the hyperbolic tangent function to compute the numerical flux for the fluid fraction function, and gives a conservative, oscillation-less and smearing-less solution to the fluid fraction OF function even for the extremely distorted interfaces of arbitrary complexity. The numerical results from the THINC scheme possess adequate quality for practical applications, which make the extra geometric reconstruction, such as those in most of the volume of fluid (VOF) methods unnecessary. Thus the scheme is quite simple. The numerical tests show that the THINC scheme has competitive accuracy compared to most exiting methods. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.