Enhanced Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH)
We have developed an enhanced version of the SPH method that removes its shortcomings while retaining its advantages. Enhanced SPH eliminates the boundary deficiency and tensile instability of SPH, thus improving its accuracy and applicability range. This is evident in the figure below where Enhanced SPH reproduces a sample function very accurately throughout the domain (as good as the exact function) while SPH fails at the boundaries.
Figure: Kernel estimate of a sample function
Being a particle method, Enhanced SPH has two major advantages over traditional Finite Element methods (such as LS-DYNA and ABAQUS): handling very large deformation in high speed impact/penetration and free flow problems, and the ability to generate and open surfaces in crack problems. Our Enhanced SPH has been successfully demonstrated on Taylor impact, crack propagation, adiabatic shear banding and thermal conduction problems – see below the time history of a high speed Tungsten projectile impacting a semi-infinite steel plate.