Topology preserving advection of implicit interfaces on Cartesian grids

Accurate representation of implicit interface topology is important for the numerical computation of two phase flow on Cartesian grids. A new method is proposed for the construction of signed distance function by geometrically projecting interface topology onto the Cartesian grid using a multi-level projection framework. The method involves a stepwise improvement in the approximation to the signed distance function based on pointwise, piecewise and locally smooth reconstructions of the interface. We show that this approach provides accurate representation of the projected interface and its topology on the Cartesian grid, including the distance from the interface and the interface normal and curvature. The projected interface can be in the form of either a connected set of marker particles that evolve with Lagrangian advection, or a discrete set of points associated with an implicit interface that evolves with the advection of a scalar function. The signed distance function obtained with geometric projection is independent of the details of the scaler field, in contrast to the conventional approach where advection and reinitialization cannot be decoupled. As a result, errors introduced by reinitialization do not amplify advection errors, which leads to substantial improvement in both volume conservation and topology representation.