Incompressible SPH simulation of water entry of a free-falling object

In this paper an incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (Incom-SPH) model is used to simulate the interactions between the free surface flow and a moving object. Lncom-SPH method is a two-step semi-implicit hydrodynamic formulation of the SPH algorithm and is capable of accurately treating the free surface deformations and impact forces during the solid-fluid interactions. For a free-falling object, its motion is tracked by an additional Lagrangian algorithm based on Newton's law to couple with the Incom-SPH program. The developed model is employed to investigate the water entry of a free-falling wedge. The accuracy of the computations is validated by the good agreement in predicting the relevant hydrokinematic and hydrodynamic parameters. Finally, a numerical test is performed to study the influence of spatial resolution on the water entry features. The Incom-SPH modeling coupled with the solid-fluid interaction algorithm could provide a promising computational tool to predict the slamming problems in coastal and offshore engineering. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.