Open boundary conditions for ISPH and their application to micro-flow

Abstract

Open boundary conditions for incompressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (ISPH) are rare. For stable simulations with open boundary conditions, one needs to specify all boundary conditions correctly in the pressure force as well as in the linear equation system for pressure calculation. Especially for homogeneous or non-homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions for pressure there exist several possibilities but only a few lead to stable results. However, this isn't trivial for open boundary conditions. We introduce a new approach for open boundary conditions for ISPH to enable stable simulations. In contrast to existing models for weakly-compressible SPH, we can specify open pressure boundary conditions because in ISPH, pressure can be calculated independently of the density. The presented approach is based on the mirror particle approach already introduced for solid wall boundary conditions. Here we divide the mirror axis in several segments with time-dependent positions.We validate the presented approach for the example of Poiseuille flow and flow around a cylinder at different Reynolds numbers and show that we get good agreement with references. Then, we demonstrate that the approach can be applied to free surface flows. Finally, we apply the new approach to micro-flow through a random porous medium with a different number of in- and outlets and demonstrate its benefits.