An Effective Smoothing Length Updating Method for Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Abstract

Smoothing length plays a significant role in smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). Inappropriate smoothing length will result in problems of stability, accuracy and efficiency. Updating smoothing length with time is very important for SPH modeling of large deformation problems. In this work, an effective smoothing length updating method is proposed. The method works in the framework of SPH with scalar smoothing length. It is quite simple in implementation and is computationally efficient. The method updates smoothing length according to maximum local particle spacing and inhomogeneity of material deformation. Numerical examples in both 2D and 3D which involve large deformation are calculated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. A comparison between the proposed method and several traditional methods is performed. Numerical results show that the present method can adapt to the simulation of severely inhomogeneous deformation and produce better stability and accuracy than the traditional methods for SPH modeling of large deformation problems.