A simple package for front tracking

A general purpose software package for the geometry and dynamics of an interface has been extracted from the Fron-Tier code developed by the authors and colleagues, and is now publicly available. The purpose of this paper is twofold. We describe significant improvements to the Front Tracking package, especially in the 3D handling of topological bifurcations. We also assess the performance of the package, in comparison with publicly distributed interface codes (the level set method), with published performance results (VOF and other methods) and with previous versions of front tracking. The major new algorithm presented here is Locally Grid Based tracking, which combines the best features of two previous 3D tracking algorithms. It combines the robustness of grid-based tracking with the accuracy of grid free tracking, and thus it is a significant improvement to both of these algorithms. We also discuss the surface curvature and normal algorithms and a higher order propagation algorithm, used for the comparison studies presented here. The code is downloadable from the web, and is accompanied by it web-based testing and evaluation site and extensive web-based documentation. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.