Prediction of energy losses in water impacts using incompressible and weakly compressible models

Abstract

In the present work the simulation of water impacts is discussed. The investigation is mainly focused on the energy dissipation involved in liquid impacts in both the frameworks of the weakly compressible and incompressible models. A detailed analysis is performed using a weakly compressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) solver and the results are compared with the solutions computed by an incompressible mesh-based Level-Set Finite Volume Method (LS-FVM). Impacts are numerically studied using single-phase models through prototypical problems in 1D and 2D frameworks. These problems were selected for the conclusions to be of interest for, e.g., the numerical computation of the flow around plunging breaking waves. The conclusions drawn are useful not only to SPH or LS-FVM users but also for other numerical models, for which accurate results on benchmark test-cases are provided.