A robust MoF method applicable to severely deformed polygonal mesh.

Abstract The MoF (Moment of Fluid) method is an accurate approach for interface reconstruction in numerical simulation of multi-material fluid flow. So far, most works focus on improving its accuracy and efficiency, such as developing analytic reconstruction method and deducing the iteration schemes based on high order derivatives of the objective function. In this paper, we mainly concern on improving its robustness, especially for severely deformed polygonal meshes, in which case the objective function has multiple minimum value points. By using an efficient method for solving multiple roots of the nonlinear equation in large scope, a new algorithm is developed to enhance robustness of the MoF method. The main idea of this algorithm is as follows. The first derivative of the objective function is continuous, so the minimum value points of the objective function must be the zero points of the first derivative. Instead of finding the zero points of the first derivative directly, we turn to calculating the minimum value points (also zero points) of the square of the first derivative, which is a convex function on a neighborhood of each zero point. Applying the properties of convex function, the neighbor of each extreme minimum point of it can be obtained efficiently. Then each zero point of the square of the first derivative can be obtained using the iterative formula in its neighbor. Finally, by comparing the values of the objective function at these zero points of the first derivative, the global minimum value point of the objective function can be found and is the desired solution. The new algorithm only uses the first derivative of the objective function. It doesn't need an initial guess for the solution, which has to be carefully chosen in previous works. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of this new algorithm. The results show that it is applicable to severely deformed polygonal mesh, even with concave cells. Highlights • A new variant of the MOF method is presented to enhance the robustness of the method. • On severely deformed meshes, the objective function may have multiple minimum values. • By solving multiple roots of a nonlinear equation, these values can be calculated. • Then by comparing these minimum values, the global minimum value can be found. • The method is very robust on highly deformed meshes, including the three-material case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]