Numerical investigation of vehicle wading based on an entirely particle-based three-dimensional SPH model

Abstract

Vehicle wading problems have received increasing attention from the automotive community in recent years because of the prosperous developments of electric vehicles, for which the performance of water tightness can be more important than conventional fuel vehicles. This paper presents an attempt to simulate vehicle wading problems based on an entirely meshless framework by using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). First of all, an easy-to-implement but effective strategy is proposed to prevent the penetration between fluid particles and a wall boundary modeled by a set of solid particles when the distribution quality of the solid particles is poor. Subsequently, a comparative study is conducted to assess the feasibility and applicability of the SPH and Finite Volume (FV) methods in solving vehicle wading problems. Furthermore, the wading dynamics of a vehicle passing a puddle under different combinations of wading speeds and accumulating water depths is also investigated and discussed in detail by using the SPH method. It is suggested that the SPH method can be regarded as a potential candidate for solving vehicle wading problems, especially for those situations where the free-surface evolution during the wading process is particularly concerning.