An accurate SPH modeling of viscous flows around bodies at low and moderate Reynolds numbers

A weakly compressible SPH scheme has been used to describe the evolution of viscous flows around blunt bodies at Reynolds numbers ranging from 10 to 2400. The simulation of such a wide range, rarely addressed to in the SPH literature, has been possible thanks to the use of a proper ghost-fluid technique and to an accurate enforcement of the boundary conditions along the solid boundaries. In this context, a new numerical technique based on previous works by Takeda et al. (1994) [48], Marrone et al. (2011) [28] and De Leffe et al. (2011) [16] has been proposed, along with a new method for the evaluation of the global loads on bodies. Particular care has been taken to study the influence of the weakly-compressibility assumption and of different ghost-fluid techniques on the numerical results. An in-depth validation of the model has been performed by comparing the numerical outcome with experimental data from the literature and other numerical references. The influence of the domain size has been discussed in order to avoid wall side effects and, at the same time, to limit the computational costs. The convergence of the numerical solutions has been checked on both global and local quantities by choosing appropriate Reynolds-cell number. © 2013 Elsevier Inc.