An adaptive front tracking technique for three-dimensional transient flows

An adaptive technique, based on both surface stretching and surface curvatu re analysis for tracking strongly deforming fluid volumes in three-dimensio nal flows is presented. The efficiency and accuracy of the technique are de monstrated for two- and three-dimensional flow simulations. For the two-dim ensional test example, the results are compared with results obtained using a different tracking approach based on the advection of a passive scalar. Although for both techniques roughly the same structures are found, the res olution for the front tracking technique is much higher. In the three-dimen sional test example, a spherical blob is tracked in a chaotic mixing flow. For this problem, the accuracy of the adaptive tracking is demonstrated by the volume conservation for the advected blob. Adaptive front tracking is s uitable for simulation of the initial stages of fluid mixing, where the int erfacial area can grow exponentially with time. The efficiency of the algor ithm significantly benefits from parallelization of the code. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.