A front-tracking/front-capturing method for the simulation of 3D multi-fluid flows with free surfaces

A method for simulating incompressible, imiscible, unsteady, Newtonian, multi-fluid flows with free surfaces is described. A sharp interface separates fluids of different density and viscosity. Surface and interfacial tensions are also considered and the required curvature is geometrically approximated at the fronts by a least squares quadratic fitting. To remove small undulations at the fronts, a mass-conserving filter is employed. The numerical method employed to solve the Navier–Stokes equations is based on the GENSMAC-3D front-tracking method. The velocity field is computed using a finite-difference scheme on an Eulerian grid. The free-surface and the interfaces are represented by an unstructured Lagrangian grid moving through an Eulerian grid. The method was validated by comparing the numerical results with analytical results for a number of simple problems. Complex numerical simulations show the capability and emphasize the robustness of this new method.