A coupled Finite Volume–Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method for incompressible flows

An hybrid approach is proposed which allows to combine Finite Volume Method (FVM) and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). The method is based on the partitioning of the computational domain into a portion discretized with a structured grid of hexahedral elements (the FVM-domain) and a portion filled with Lagrangian particles (the SPH-domain), separated by an interface made of triangular elements. A smooth transition between the solutions in the FVM and SPH regions is guaranteed by the introduction of a layer of grid cells in the SPH-domain and of a band of virtual particles in the FVM one (both neighboring the interface), on which the hydrodynamic variables are obtained through suitable interpolation procedures from the local solutions. Several test cases are used in order to test the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed hybrid method, showing that a significant reduction in the computational efforts can be achieved with respect to the standard SPH method.