Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Modelling of the Impact of a Flat Plate upon an Aerated Water Surface

Abstract

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is a particle-based method for solving Navier-Stokes and similar equations and is well-suited to problems where the computational domain becomes highly deformed. This study will describe in detail SPH simulations of various single- and multiphase flows with free surfaces and interactions with structures and solid surfaces. All 2D and 3D implementations have been compared with other numerical and experimental results. By adoption of multiphase and 3D models the computational requirements rise due to the increased number of particles. The fact that large numbers of particles are required in the simulations means that a parallelised version of the SPH code has had to be developed. Cases considered in this study include collapsing water column, Rayleigh-Taylor instability and bubble rising.

The main focus is the impact of a flat plate upon a bubbly water/air mixture, modelling experimental tests carried out in the FROTH project at the University of Plymouth. We show that successful predictions of peak impact pressure for varying levels of aeration can be achieved by matching sound speed to those of a homogeneous air-water mixture at the appropriate level of aeration.