Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Code Research Articles

A Scaling Relation for Core Heating by Giant Impacts and Implications for Dynamo Onset

AbstractAccretional heating of Earth's interior during formation is pivotal to its subsequent thermal and chemical evolution. In particular, impact heating of Earth's core is expected, but its amplitude and radial distribution within the core is unknown and could influence the onset of the geodynamo. The uncertainty is due, in part, to the lack of constraints on the temperature of the interior following formation due to the difficulty of preserving a record of such a high energy environment, and the assertion that super‐heating during formation would be rapidly lost through magma ocean cooling. Here we systematically investigate core heating due to giant impacts using a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code with simulations spanning a range of impact angles, velocities, and masses. From these simulations we derive a scaling relation for core heating that depends on the impact parameters and predicts the radial core temperature profile following the impact. Our findings show that a significant amount of heat is deposited into the core, with a canonical impact scenario resulting in an average core temperature increase of about 3000 K, approximately 500 K higher than that of the overlying mantle. In this case the heat distribution within the core produces a strong thermal stratification. We use a parameterized cooling model to estimate that the core could have cooled to an adiabatic state ∼290 Myr after a canonical impact, which is consistent with the observed time span between the age of the Moon and evidence for an active geodynamo.

Lessons Learned from NASA’s DART Impact about Disrupting Rubble-pile Asteroids

We present a series of numerical simulations using a shock physics smoothed particle hydrodynamics code, investigating energetic impacts on small celestial bodies characterized by diverse internal structures, ranging from weak and homogeneous compositions to rubble-pile structures with varying boulder volume packing. Our findings reveal that the internal structure of these rubble-pile bodies significantly influences the impact outcomes. Specifically, we observe that the same impact energy can either catastrophically disrupt a target with a low boulder packing (≲30 vol%), or result in the ejection of only a small fraction of material from a target with the same mass but high boulder packing (≳40 vol%). This finding highlights the pivotal role played by the rubble-pile structure, effectively acting as a bulk shear strength, which governs the size and behavior of the resulting impact. Consequently, understanding and characterizing the internal structure of asteroids will be of paramount importance for any future efforts to deflect or disrupt an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

Numerical implementation of the hypoplastic model for SPH analysis of soil structure development in extremely large deformation

The extremely large deformation of soil is a significant challenge due to the dynamic changes in soil structure, but it is poorly understood owing to inadequate effective numerical methods. This paper presents a numerical method for analysing the responses of sand-like granular soil undergoing extremely large deformation. The proposed method utilizes the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) technique, which is a meshfree particle-based approach capable of circumventing the computational difficulties associated with mesh distortion. The Gudehus-Bauer (G-B) hypoplastic model, which can capture the pressure- and density- dependent mechanical behaviour of granular soil, is implemented into the in-house developed SPH code. Concerning the characteristics of large deformation, the Green-Naghdi rate is applied in this study to achieve objective stress integration. An adaptive explicit stress integration scheme, termed Modified Euler automatic Substepping with Error Control (M-E-SEC) is utilized to handle the time integration of the SPH equation system. Additionally, a stability correction method is introduced to suppress the breakdown problem that occurs at low-stress states. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by experimental data. Furthermore, several numerical examples are presented to elucidate the evolution of shear band structures in granular soils subject to extremely large deformation levels.

A single-phase GPU-accelerated surface tension model using SPH

This paper presents an accelerated single-phase surface tension smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) solver developed to run entirely on a graphics processing unit (GPU) capable of simulating millions of particles in three dimensions on a single GPU. The single-phase surface tension model is augmented with a contact line force to improve the prediction of the physics at the liquid-solid contact point. The surface tension model uses the modified dynamic boundary condition (mDBC) to impose no-slip conditions at the wall boundary. To enable simulations with millions of particles, the single-phase surface tension model has been implemented in the open-source SPH code DualSPHysics to exploit the GPU acceleration, paying special attention to the size of the kernel support and integration of the neighbour lists. The new scheme is validated using 2-D and 3-D test cases including drop deformation, drop oscillation, Rayleigh-Plateau instability and surface contact angles. The results show a good agreement with the analytical solutions with a standard spatial convergence behaviour. Profiling the new surface tension solver shows an additional computational complexity. The performance analysis shows that the new code has a speed up of up two orders of magnitude (x70-80) compared to the CPU-only code. Profiling the new CUDA kernels shows they have the near identical performance metrics with the main CUDA kernels in the original DualSPHysics solver.

SPH Simulation of Solitary Wave Interaction with Cylinder

The wave impact on marine structures is concerning in ocean and coastal engineering. Cylinders are important components of various marine structures such as piers of sea-crossing bridge, columns of oil and gas platforms and subsea pipelines. In this study, the interaction of solitary wave with a submerged horizontal cylinder and a surface-piercing vertical cylinder are numerically studied by the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code SPHinXsys. SPHinXsys is an open-source multi-physics library based on the weakly compressible SPH and invokes the low-dissipation Riemann solver for alleviating numerical noises in the simulation of fluid dynamics. The capability of SPHinXsys in reproducing the fluid fields of solitary wave propagating through cylinders is demonstrated by comparing with the experimental data. With the validation in hand, the features of the wave–structure process are examined.

Planet migration in massive circumbinary discs

ABSTRACT Most stars are in multiple systems, with the majority of those being binaries. A large number of planets have been confirmed in binary stars and, therefore, it is important to understand their formation and dynamical evolution. We perform simulations to investigate the migration of wide-orbit giant planets (semimajor axis 100 au) in massive circumbinary discs (mass $0.1\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$) that are marginally gravitationally unstable, using the three-dimensional Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic code seren. We vary the binary parameters to explore their effect on planet migration. We find that a planet in a massive circumbinary disc initially undergoes a period of rapid inward migration before switching to a slow outward migration, as it does in a circumstellar disc. However, the presence of the binary enhances planet migration and mass growth. We find that a high binary mass ratio (binary with equal mass stars) results in more enhanced outward planet migration. Additionally, larger binary separation and/or higher binary eccentricity results to a faster outward planet migration and stronger planet growth. We conclude that wide-orbit giant planets attain wider final orbits due to migration around binary stars than around single stars.

Efficient implementation of low-order-precision smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method is widely accepted as a flexible numerical treatment for surface boundaries and interactions. High-resolution simulations of hydrodynamic events require high-performance computing (HPC). There is a need for an SPH code that runs efficiently on modern supercomputers involving accelerators such as NVIDIA or AMD graphics processing units. In this work, we applied half-precision, which is widely used in artificial intelligence, to the SPH method. However, improving HPC performance at such low-order precisions is a challenge. An as-is implementation with half-precision will have lower computational cost than that of float/double precision simulations, but also worsens the simulation accuracy. We propose a scaling and shifting method that maintains the simulation accuracy near the level of float/double precision. By examining the impact of half-precision on the simulation accuracy and time-to-solution, we demonstrated that the use of half-precision can improve the computational performance of SPH simulations for scientific purposes without sacrificing the accuracy. In addition, we demonstrated that the efficiency of half-precision depends on the architecture used.

Modeling Solids in Nuclear Astrophysics with Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is a frequently applied tool in computational astrophysics to solve the fluid dynamics equations governing the systems under study. For some problems, for example when involving asteroids and asteroid impacts, the additional inclusion of material strength is necessary in order to accurately describe the dynamics. In compact stars, that is white dwarfs and neutron stars, solid components are also present. Neutron stars have a solid crust, which is the strongest material known in nature. However, their dynamical evolution, when modeled via SPH or other computational fluid dynamics codes, is usually described as a purely fluid dynamics problem. Here, we present the first 3D simulations of neutron star crustal toroidal oscillations including material strength with the Los Alamos National Laboratory SPH code FleCSPH. In the first half of the paper, we present the numerical implementation of solid material modeling together with standard tests. The second half is on the simulation of crustal oscillations in the fundamental toroidal mode. Here, we dedicate a large fraction of the paper to approaches that can suppress numerical noise in the solid. If not minimized, the latter can dominate the crustal motion in the simulations.

Research on oil boom performance based on Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method.

To address the issues of fluid-solid coupling, instability in the liquid two-phase flow, poor computational efficiency, treating the free surface as a slip wall, and neglecting the movement of oil booms in simulating oil spill containment, this study adopts the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method to establish a numerical model for solid-liquid coupling and liquid two-phase flow, specifically designed for oil boom containment and control. The DualSPHysics solver is employed for numerical simulations, incorporating optimized SPH techniques and eight different skirt configurations of the oil boom into the numerical model of two-phase liquid interaction. By setting relevant parameters in the SPH code to enhance computational efficiency, the variations in centroid, undulation, and stability of undulation velocity for different oil boom shapes are observed. The experimental results demonstrate that the improved oil boom exhibits superior oil containment performance. These findings provide a theoretical basis for the design of oil boom skirt structures.

Simulating hypervelocity impacts into rubble pile structures for planetary defense

Kinetic impactors are one of the most mature technologies for planetary defense and this technique was tested for the first time by NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. The material and physical properties of the asteroid are very important in understanding the efficacy of a kinetic impactor. To constrain how the local topography of an impactor alters the response to the hypervelocity impact of a kinetic impactor, we used the adaptive smoothed particle hydrodynamics code, Spheral++, to impact plates into a rubble pile asteroid. By varying both the impact location and the strength between the boulders and regolith of the formed asteroid, we find that variations in the rubble pile contributes approximately 10% uncertainty to the resulting momentum enhancement in regolith dominated impacts. We further demonstrate that the craters produced from the impacts into the rubble pile are wide, shallow, and show deviations from symmetry due to the presence of boulders on the surface near the impact site. These simulations help us constrain the potential outcomes that may occur from a hypervelocity kinetic impact in a planetary defense scenario.

SPH modeling of biomass granular flow: Theoretical implementation and experimental validation

The commercialization of biomass-derived energy is impeded by flowability challenges arising from the feeding and handling of granular biomass materials in full-scale biorefineries. To overcome these obstacles, a robust and accurate model to simulate the flow of granular biomass is indispensable. However, conventional mesh-based numerical codes are limited by inherent mesh distortion in simulating large deformation that commonly occurs in granular biomass handling. In this study, we propose a graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated meshless Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code to model the flow of granular biomass materials. A modified void ratio-based mass conversation, a hybrid particle-to-particle/surface frictional boundary treatment, and a hypoplastic constitutive model are implemented. Four numerical examples, an elastic block sliding on inclined planes, sand column collapse, Angle of Repose, and axial compression tests for pine chips, were simulated using the developed SPH code. The results demonstrate good agreement between numerical predictions and analytical and experimental data for all four examples, validating the SPH code and increasing confidence that it can be applied to simulate more complex granular biomass handling processes, such as hopper feeding or auger conveyance.

The complex interplay of AGN jet-inflated bubbles and the intracluster medium

ABSTRACTWe use SWIFT, a smoothed particle hydrodynamics code, to simulate the evolution of bubbles inflated by active galactic nuclei (AGNs) jets, as well as their interactions with the ambient intracluster medium (ICM). These jets inflate lobes that turn into bubbles after the jets are turned off (at t = 50 Myr). Almost all of the energy injected into the jets is transferred to the ICM very quickly after they are turned off, with roughly 70 per cent of it in thermal form and the rest in kinetic. At late times (t > 500 Myr) we find the following: (1) the bubbles draw out trailing filaments of low-entropy gas, similar to those recently observed, (2) the action of buoyancy and the uplift of the filaments dominates the energetics of both the bubbles and the ICM, and (3) almost all of the originally injected energy is in the form of gravitational potential energy, with the bubbles containing 15 per cent of it, and the rest contained in the ICM. These findings indicate that feedback proceeds mainly through the displacement of gas to larger radii. We find that the uplift of these filaments permanently changes the thermodynamic properties of the ICM by reducing the central density and increasing the central temperature (within 30 kpc). We propose that jet feedback proceeds not only through the heating of the ICM (which can delay cooling), but also through the uplift-related reduction of the central gas density. The latter also delays cooling, on top of reducing the amount of gas available to cool.

Investigation of Nanoscale Scratching on Copper with Conical Tools Using Particle-Based Simulation

In this study, a modeling approach based on smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) was implemented to simulate the nanoscale scratching process using conical tools with different negative rake angles. The implemented model enables the study of the topography of groove profiles, scratching forces, and the residual plastic strain beneath the groove. An elastoplastic material model was employed for the workpiece, and the tool–workpiece interaction was defined by a contact model adopted from the Hertz theory. An in-house Lagrangian SPH code was implemented to perform nano-scratching simulations. The SPH simulation results were compared with nanoscale scratching experimental data available in the literature. The simulation results revealed that the normal force was more dominant compared to the cutting force, in agreement with experimental results reported for a conical tip tool with a 60° negative rake angle. In addition, the simulated groove profile was in good agreement with the groove profile produced in the aforementioned experiment. The numerical simulations also showed that the normal and cutting forces increased with the increase in the scratching depth and rake angle. Although the cutting and ploughing mechanisms were noticed in nano-scratching, the ploughing mechanism was more dominant for increased negative rake angles. It was also observed that residual plastic strain exists below the groove surface, and that the plastically deformed layer thickness beneath a scratched groove is larger for more negative values of the tool rake angle and higher scratching depths.

Disk Evolution Study Through Imaging of Nearby Young Stars (DESTINYS): Characterization of the young star T CrA and its circumstellar environment

Context. In recent years, a new hot topic has emerged in the star and planet formation field, namely, the interaction between the circumstellar disk and its birth cloud. The birth environments of young stars leave strong imprints on the star itself and their surroundings. In this context, we present a detailed analysis of the rich circumstellar environment around the young Herbig Ae/Be star T CrA. Aims. Our aim is to understand the nature of the stellar system and the extended circumstellar structures, as seen in scattered light images. Methods. We conducted our analysis on the basis of a set of combined archival data and new adaptive optics images at a high contrast and high resolution. Results. The scattered light images reveal the presence of a complex environment around T CrA, composed of a bright, forward-scattering rim of the disk's surface that is seen at very high inclinations, along with a dark lane of the disk midplane, bipolar outflows, and streamer features that are likely tracing infalling material from the surrounding birth cloud onto the disk. The analysis of the light curve suggests that the star is a binary with a period of 29.6 yr, confirming previous assertions based on spectro-astrometry. The comparison of the scattered light images with the ALMA continuum and 12CO (2–1) line emission shows that the disk is in Keplerian rotation and the northern side of the outflowing material is receding, while the southern side is approaching the observer. The overall system lies on different geometrical planes. The orbit of the binary star is perpendicular to the outflows and is seen edge on. The disk is itself seen edge-on, with a position angle of ~7°. The direction of the outflows seen in scattered light is in agreement with the direction of the more distant molecular hydrogen emission-line objects (MHOs) associated with the star. Modeling of the spectral energy distribution using a radiative transfer scheme is in good agreement with the proposed configuration, as well as the hydrodynamical simulation performed using a smoothed particle hydrodynamics code. Conclusions. We find evidence of streamers of accreting material around T CrA. These streamers connect the filament, along which T CrA is forming along with the outer parts of the disk, suggesting that the strong misalignment between the inner and outer disk is due to a change in the direction of the angular momentum of the material accreting on the disk during the late phase of star formation. This impacts the accretion taking place in the components of the binary, favoring the growth of the primary with respect the secondary, in contrast to the case of aligned disks.

Evaluation of SPH and FVM Models of Kinematically Prescribed Peristalsis-like Flow in a Tube

Peristaltic flow is important in many biological processes, including digestion, and forms an important component of any in silico model of the stomach. There is a clear need to verify the simulations of such flows. An analytical solution was identified that can be used for model verification, which gives an equation for the net volumetric flow over a cycle for an applied sinusoidal wall motion. Both a smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code (from the CSIRO), which is being used to develop a stomach model that includes wall motion, buoyancy, acid secretion and food breakdown, and the Ansys Fluent Finite Volume Method (FVM) solver, that is widely used in industry for complex engineering flows, are used in this exercise. Both give excellent agreement with the analytic solution for the net flow over a cycle for a range of occlusion ratios of 0.1–0.6. Very similar velocity fields are obtained with the two methods. The impact of parameters affecting solution stability and accuracy are described and investigated. Having validated the moving wall capability of the SPH model it can be used with confidence in stomach simulations that include wall motion.

Simulation of sloshing in the moon pool with Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

In maritime heavy industry, the moon pool is an opening through the hull of some vessels. We replicate a generic design of the pool with the Lagrangian approach Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) whose mathematical model efficiently simulates the interphasial surface. In this study we present the capability of our in-house SPH code to handle the sloshing in the moon pool. We validate the SPH approach to flows for the sloshing tank benchmark and show the stability of this approach for the non-trivial case of the moon pool.

The role of physical and numerical viscosity in hydrodynamical instabilities

ABSTRACT The evolution of the Kelvin–Helmholtz Instability (KHI) is widely used to assess the performance of numerical methods. We employ this instability to test both the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and the meshless finite mass (MFM) implementation in opengadget3. We quantify the accuracy of SPH and MFM in reproducing the linear growth of the KHI with different numerical and physical set-ups. Among them, we consider: (i) numerical induced viscosity, and (ii) physically motivated, Braginskii viscosity, and compare their effect on the growth of the KHI. We find that the changes of the inferred numerical viscosity when varying nuisance parameters such as the set-up or the number of neighbours in our SPH code are comparable to the differences obtained when using different hydrodynamical solvers, i.e. MFM. SPH reproduces the expected reduction of the growth rate in the presence of physical viscosity and recovers well the threshold level of physical viscosity needed to fully suppress the instability. In the case of galaxy clusters with a virial temperature of 3 × 107 K, this level corresponds to a suppression factor of ≈10−3 of the classical Braginskii value. The intrinsic, numerical viscosity of our SPH implementation in such an environment is inferred to be at least an order of magnitude smaller (i.e. ≈10−4), re-ensuring that modern SPH methods are suitable to study the effect of physical viscosity in galaxy clusters.

Osaka Feedback Model. II. Modeling Supernova Feedback Based on High-resolution Simulations

Feedback from supernovae (SNe) is an essential mechanism that self-regulates the growth of galaxies, and a better model of SN feedback is still needed in galaxy-formation simulations. In the first part of this paper, using an Eulerian hydrodynamic code Athena++, we find the universal scaling relations for the time evolution of momentum and radius for a superbubble, when the momentum and time are scaled by those at the shell-formation time. In the second part of this paper, we develop a SN feedback model based on the Athena++ simulation results utilizing Voronoi tessellation around each star particle, and implement it into the GADGET3-Osaka smoothed particle hydrodynamic code. Our feedback model was demonstrated to be isotropic and conservative in terms of energy and momentum. We examined the mass/energy/metal loading factors and find that our stochastic thermal feedback model produced galactic outflow that carries metals high above the galactic plane but with weak suppression of star formation. Additional mechanical feedback further suppressed star formation and brought the simulation results into better agreement with the observations of the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation, with all the results being within the uncertainties of observed data. We argue that both thermal and mechanical feedback are necessary for the SN feedback model of galaxy evolution when an individual SN bubble is unresolved.

Spin-driven jet feedback in idealized simulations of galaxy groups and clusters

ABSTRACT We implement a black hole spin evolution and jet feedback model into SWIFT, a smoothed particle hydrodynamics code. The jet power is determined self-consistently assuming that the black hole accretion rate is equal to the Bondi rate (i.e. the accretion efficiency is 100 per cent), and using a realistic, spin-dependent efficiency. The jets are launched along the spin axis of the black hole, resulting in natural reorientation and precession. We apply the model to idealized simulations of galaxy groups and clusters, finding that jet feedback successfully quenches gas cooling and star formation in all systems. Our group-size halo (M200 = 1013 M⊙) is quenched by a strong jet episode triggered by a cooling flow, and it is kept quenched by a low-power jet fed from hot halo accretion. In more massive systems (M200 ≳ 1014 M⊙), hot halo accretion is insufficient to quench the galaxies, or to keep them quenched after the first cooling episode. These galaxies experience multiple episodes of gas cooling, star formation, and jet feedback. In the most massive galaxy cluster that we simulate (M200 = 1015 M⊙), we find peak cold gas masses of 1010 M⊙ and peak star formation rates of a few times 100 $\mathrm{M}_\odot \,\, \mathrm{yr}^{-1}$. These values are achieved during strong cooling flows, which also trigger the strongest jets with peak powers of 1047$\mathrm{erg}\, \mathrm{s}^{-1}$. These jets subsequently shut off the cooling flows and any associated star formation. Jet-inflated bubbles draw out low-entropy gas that subsequently forms dense cooling filaments in their wakes, as seen in observations.

Numerical Simulation Study of Debris Particles Movement Characteristics by Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Debris flow is an important natural hazard in mountain zone because it can threaten human lives with very little warning. Since laboratory experiments on debris flows at real scale are difficult to perform, numerical simulations are important in evaluating the impact of such flows. Among several candidate models, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is a particular attractive numerical method for this purpose. SPH is a particle-based numerical hydrodynamic method originally developed in the astrophysical field before extension to elastic bodies. Several works have already tested the applicability of SPH to debris flow, despite there are only few detailed validations. In this report, thus, we aimed to check the applicability of SPH to debris flows. Since the accurate treatment of the elastic bodies tends to be computationally expensive, we have developed a massively parallel SPH code. A comparison between laboratory experiments and numerical simulations using SPH showed qualitatively similar features, though there are differences in quantitive comparisons.