  Flares from tidal disruption events are unique tracers of quiescent black
holes at the centre of galaxies. The appearance of these flares is very
sensitive to whether the star is totally or partially disrupted, and in this
paper we seek to identify the critical distance of the star from the black hole
(r_d) that enables us to distinguish between these two outcomes. We perform
here Mesh-free Finite Mass, traditional, and modern Smoothed Particle
Hydrodynamical simulations of star-black hole close encounters, with the aim of
checking if the value of r_d depends on the simulation technique. We find that
the critical distance (or the so-called critical disruption parameter beta_d)
depends only weakly on the adopted simulation method, being beta_d=0.92\pm 0.02
for a gamma=5/3 polytrope and beta_d=2.01\pm 0.01 for a gamma=4/3 polytrope.
