A stable SPH with adaptive B-spline kernel

Abstract

Tensile instability, often observed in smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), is a numerical artifact that manifests itself by unphysical clustering or separation of particles. The instability originates in estimating the derivatives of the smoothing functions which, when interact with material constitution may result in negative stiffness in the discretized system. In the present study, a stable formulation of SPH is developed where the kernel function is continuously adapted at every material point. B-spline basis function with a variable intermediate knot is used as the kernel function. The shape of the kernel function is then modified by changing the intermediate knot position such that the condition associated with instability does not arise. While implementing the algorithm the simplicity and computational efficiency of SPH are not compromised. One-dimensional dispersion analysis is performed to understand the effect of adaptive kernel on the stability. Finally, the efficacy of the algorithm is demonstrated through some benchmark elastic dynamics problems.