Application of SPH to Single and Multiphase Geophysical, Biophysical and Industrial Fluid Flows

Abstract

A series of challenging fluid flow applications are used to demonstrate the powerful capabilities of the SPH method. The applications are classified according to whether they are industrial, geophysical or biophysical in nature. The versatility and flexibility of SPH allows it to be used to predict wide ranges of flow types with diverse coupled secondary physics and chemistry. The demonstration examples span free surface hydrodynamics, fluid-structure interactions, multiphase flows (bubbles and/or solids immersed in a fluid and multiple fluids with large density differences), and flows involving reactions and phase change. For the studies presented SPH demonstrates at least one and often several key advantages that make the method well suited to these applications. These include the natural handling of free surfaces (especially when splashing), strong advection (arising from the method being Lagrangian), very high deformation levels (due to being meshfree) and intrinsic history tracking (which provides specific benefits for flows with multiple materials, reactions and phase change).

KEYWORDS:

• SPH
• coupled methods
• heat transfer
• multiphase flow
• slurry
• bubbly flow
• hydrodynamics

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Stuart Mead for assistance with running and visualising the dam break simulations and Joseph Ha for his assistance with the die casting and reactive flow simulations. Contributions to the development of the SPH solver used in this paper by Sharen Cummins. Thanks are expressed to the CSIRO Workspace team for their support in the usage of this platform. The dam break work described in this paper was funded through the Australia-China Environment Development Partnership (ACEDP), a bilateral Australian Government AusAID initiative that aimed to encourage policy dialogue, foster partnerships and strengthen national capacities in natural resources management. Contributions from SASMAC in the creation of building geometry for the town flooding are acknowledged. The platform diving and swimming work was partially funded by the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). Technical input from Diving Australia, athlete laser scans by Dave Pease (AIS) and input on swimming kinematics by Bruce Mason (AIS) are also recognised. The authors also thank collaborators at CSIRO Agriculture and Food for the detailed information used to construct the twin screw extruder model. Contributions from Soon Hyoung Pyo (ETRI) to the visualisation of the bubbly ale flows are acknowledged. The contents and opinions expressed here remain those solely of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).