gVOF: An open-source package for unsplit geometric volume of fluid methods on arbitrary grids

TL;DR

gVOF is a comprehensive open-source software package that implements advanced geometric volume of fluid methods on arbitrary grids, enabling accurate and efficient simulation of complex two-phase flows with robust handling of non-convex geometries.

Contribution

This work introduces a self-contained gVOF package that handles complex non-convex flux polyhedra efficiently without convex decomposition, improving accuracy and computational efficiency in VOF simulations.

Findings

High accuracy and efficiency demonstrated on structured and unstructured grids.

Robust handling of non-convex and self-intersecting flux polyhedra.

Outperforms existing methods in accuracy and computational speed.

Abstract

The gVOF package includes a complete and self-contained set of routines for volume of fluid initialization, interface reconstruction and fluid advection, which are used to implement several accurate and efficient geometric volume of fluid (VOF) methods on arbitrary grids, either structured or unstructured with convex or non-convex cells, based on multidimensional unsplit advection and piecewise linear interface calculation (PLIC) schemes. The package uses the non-convex analytical and geometrical tools developed by L\'opez et al. [J. Comput. Phys. 392 (2019) 666-693] and the isosurface extraction procedure proposed by L\'opez et al. [J. Comput. Phys. 444 (2021) 110579]. The operations required during the advection step of unsplit geometric VOF methods in general involve handling of high-complex non-convex flux polyhedra, even with self-intersecting faces, which are robustly and efficiently treated in this work without the need of costly techniques based on convex decomposition. Results for the accuracy, computational efficiency, and volume (local and global) conservation properties of different combinations of the implemented advection and reconstruction methods are presented for several numerical tests on structured and unstructured grids. An extensive comparison with results obtained by other authors using advanced geometric VOF methods shows the outstanding performance of the gVOF package in terms of efficiency and accuracy. To demonstrate the performance of the package in solving complex two-phase flow problems, the implemented methods are combined with an existing in-house code to simulate the impact of a water drop on a free surface. The package can be used in FORTRAN or C languages and will be publicly available for download. The OpenMP application programming interface is also used to improve computational efficiency.