A WENO SPH scheme with improved transport velocity and consistent divergence operator

Abstract

The Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (ALE-SPH) formulation can guarantee stable solutions preventing the adoption of empirical parameters such as artificial viscosity. However, the convergence rate of the ALE-SPH formulation is still limited by the inaccuracy of the SPH spatial operators. In this work, a Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory (WENO) spatial reconstruction is then adopted to minimise the numerical diffusion introduced by the approximate Riemann solver (which ensures stability), in combination with two alternative approaches to restore the consistency of the scheme: corrected divergence SPH operators and the particle regularisation guaranteed by the correction of the transport velocity. The present work has been developed in the framework of the DualSPHysics open-source code. The beneficial effect of the WENO reconstruction to reduce numerical diffusion in ALE-SPH schemes is first confirmed by analysing the propagation of a small pressure perturbation in a fluid initially at rest. With the aid of a 2-D vortex test case, it is then demonstrated that the two aforementioned techniques to restore consistency effectively reduce saturation in the convergence to the analytical solution. Moreover, high-order (above second) convergence is achieved. Yet, the presented scheme is tested by means of a circular blast wave problem to demonstrate that the restoration of consistency is a key feature to guarantee accuracy even in the presence of a discontinuous pressure field. Finally, a standing wave has been reproduced with the aim of assessing the capability of the proposed approach to simulate free-surface flows.