A hybrid marching cubes based IsoAlpha method for interface reconstruction

Abstract

In modelling two-phase flows, accurate representation of interfaces is crucial. A class of methods for interface reconstruction are based on isosurface extraction, which involves a non-iterative, interpolation based approach. These approaches have been shown to be faster by an order of magnitude than the conventional PLIC schemes. In this work, we present a new isosurface extraction based interface reconstruction scheme based on the Marching Cubes algorithm (MC), which is commonly used in computer graphics for visualizing isosurfaces. The MC algorithm apriori lists and categorizes all possible interface configurations in a single grid cell into a Look Up Table (LUT), which makes this approach fast and robust. We also show that for certain interface configurations, the inverse problem of obtaining the isovalue from the cell volume fraction is not surjective, and a special treatment is required while handling these cases. We then demonstrate the capabilities of the method through benchmark cases for 2D and 3D static/dynamic interface reconstruction.