• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.277-286
• /
• 2012

In the numerical simulation of wave fields using a multi-phase flow model that considers simultaneous flows of materials with different states such as gas, liquid and solid, there is need of an accurate representation of the interface separating the fluids. We adopted an algebraic interface capturing method called tangent of hyperbola for interface-capturing(THINC) method for the capture of the free-surface in computations of multi-phase flow simulations instead of geometrical-type methods such a volume of fluid(VOF) method. The THINC method uses a hyperbolic tangent functions to represent the surface, and compute the numerical flux for the fluid fraction functions. One of the remarkable advantages of THINC method is its easy applicability to incorporate various numerical codes based on Navier-Stokes solver because it does not require the extra geometric reconstruction needed in most of VOF-type methods. Several tests were carried out in order to investigate the advection of interfaces and to verify the applicability of the THINC method to wave fields based on the one-field model for immiscible two-phase flows (TWOPM). The numerical results revealed that the THINC method is able to track the interface between air and water separating the fluids although its algorithm is fairly simple.