Propagation of gravity waves through an SPH scheme with numerical diffusive terms

Basing on the work by Antuono et al. (2010) [1], an SPH model with numerical diffusive terms (here denoted delta-SPH) is combined with an enhanced treatment of solid boundaries to simulate 20 gravity waves generated by a wave maker and propagating into a basin. Both regular and transient wave systems are considered. In the former, a large number of simulations is performed for different wave steepness and height-to-depth ratio and the results are compared with a BEM Mixed-Eulerian-Lagrangian solver (here denoted BEM-MEL solver). In the latter, the delta-SPH model has been compared with both the experimental measurements available in the literature and with the BEM-MEL solver, at least until the breaking event occurs. The results show a satisfactory agreement between the delta-SPH model, the BEM-MEL solver and the experiments. Finally, the influence of the weakly-compressibility assumption on the SPH results is inspected and a convergence analysis is provided in order to identify the minimal spatial resolution needed to get an accurate representation of gravity waves. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.