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An improved coupling method of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and element bending group (EBG) is developed for modeling the interaction of viscous flows with free surface and flexible structures with free and fixed ends. SPH and EBG are both particle methods which are appealing in modeling problems with free surfaces, moving interfaces and large deformations. SPH is used to model viscous fluid, while EBG is used to model flexible structure. Structure particles are also used as moving boundary for SPH, and the interaction of flexible structure with fluid is therefore modeled through the interaction of structure particles and fluid particles. A fixed-end treatment is introduced for flexible structures. A free surface treatment and a surface tension model are used for free surface flow. The improved SPH–EBG method is applied to simulate problems of dam break flow on flexible structures. The good agreement of presented numerical results with existing experimental and numerical results clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of the SPH and EBG coupling approach in modeling fluid–flexible structure interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate different baffles on mitigating liquid sloshing in a rectangular tank due to a horizontal excitation and to find out the optimal selection of sloshing mitigation for practical applications. Design/methodology/approach – The numerical study is conducted by using a proven improved smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), which is convenient in tracking free surfaces and capable of obtaining smooth and correct pressure field. Findings – Liquid sloshing effects in a rectangular tank with vertical middle baffles, horizontal baffles, T-shape baffles and porous baffles are investigated together with those without any baffles. It is found that the existence of baffles can mitigate sloshing effects and the mitigation performance depends on the shape, structure and location of the baffles. Considering the balance of sloshing mitigation performance and the complexity in structure and design, the I shaped and T shaped baffles can be good choices to mitigate sloshing effects. Practical implications – The presented methodology and findings can be helpful in practical engineering applications, especially in ocean engineering and problems with large sloshing effects. Originality/value – The SPH method is a meshfree, Lagrangian particle method, and therefore it is an attractive approach for modeling liquid sloshing with material interfaces, free surfaces and moving boundaries. In most previous literature, only simple baffles are investigated. In this paper, more complicated baffles are investigated, which can be helpful in practical applications and engineering designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuum surface force (CSF) model in conjunction with the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method is commonly used in the simulation of multi-phase flows with surface tension effect. However, it cannot be directly applied for modeling free-surface flows since the normalization requirement, which states that the integral of the surface delta function through the interface should be equal to one, is violated due to the particle deficiency issue. In this work, we propose an improved CSF model based on the SPH method with the aim of recovering the normalization requirement. The particle deficiency issue at the free surface is tackled by introducing the jump in color function into the calculation of the surface delta function. As a result, the accuracy of the surface tension measurement is significantly improved without using the virtual particles. Besides, this improved CSF model also allows an accurate and efficient implementation of the Robin boundary condition which is frequently encountered in heat transfer problems. Several benchmark problems are investigated to validate the performance of the proposed method. The numerical results verify that the improved CSF model in SPH method is well capable of simulating free-surface flows and heat transfer problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ballast water has frequently been used in ships to provide stability and adjust trim, stress, and torsion for optimal steering and propulsion. Numerical simulation of the movement of ballast water and its interaction with the solid walls of operating ships are very difficult for traditional grid-based numerical models. In this paper, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method is applied to simulate water tank sloshing and the movement of ships carrying ballast water in three cases. Numerical results of water tank sloshing are compared with experimental ones. Numerical results of ships indicate that carrying ballast water in several separated small tanks generally makes a ship more stable, but keeping ballast water in one big tank generally makes a ship more unstable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The weakly compressible SPH (WCSPH) method has been widely used for solving hydrodynamic problems, in which the fluid is assumed to be weakly compressible through limiting the density deviation to a small value. Despite its simplicity and robustness in implementation, the WCSPH method is generally hindered by its poor accuracy and spurious oscillations in the pressure field which may lead to numerical instability. In order to dampen the spurious oscillations without introducing excessive dissipation, a Roe-type approximate Riemann solver with a low-dissipation limiter was proposed and applied to the WCSPH method by Zhang et al. (2017). The present paper aims to extend this low-dissipation Riemann solver to the finite particle method (FPM), which can be referred to an enhanced or modified version of the conventional SPH method, for reducing spurious pressure oscillations and meanwhile achieving higher order of accuracy. Numerical results demonstrate that the Riemann solver based FPM is effective in modeling incompressible flows and it produces a more accurate flow field than the conventional WCSPH and Riemann solver based WCSPH methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A numerical method based on smoothed particle hydrodynamics with adaptive spatial resolution (SPH-ASR) was developed for simulating free surface flows. This method can reduce the computational demands while maintaining the numerical accuracy. In this method, the spatial resolution changes adaptively according to the distance to the free surface by numerical particle splitting and merging. The particles are split for refinement when they are near the free surface, while they are merged for coarsening when they are away from the free surface. A search algorithm was implemented for identifying the particles at the free surface. A particle shifting technique, considering variable smoothing length, was introduced to improve the particle distribution. The presented SPH-ASR method was validated by simulating various free surface flows, and the results were compared to those obtained using SPH with uniform spatial resolution (USR) and experimental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]