Computational Modelling of Fluid-Solid Interaction Problems by Coupling Smoothed Particles Hydrodynamics and the Discrete Element Method

Discrete Element Method (DEM) and Smoothed Particles Hydrodynamics
(SPH) are integrated to investigate the macroscopic dynamics of fluid-solid
interaction (FSI) problems. This coupled model is originated from two
different meshless methods without mesh generation, which can handle
fluid-particle-structure interactions with structural deformation/failure. With
SPH the fluid phase is represented by a set of SPH particle elements
moving in accordance with the Navier-Stokes equations. The solid phase
consists of single or multiple solid particle(s) phase and deformable
structure(s) phase which are represented by DEM particle elements using a
linear contact model and a linear parallel contact model to account for the
interaction between particle elements, respectively. To couple the fluid
phase and solid particle phase, a local volume fraction and a weighted
average algorithm are proposed to reformulate the governing equations and
the interaction forces. The structure phase is coupled with the fluid phase by
incorporating the structure’s DEM particle elements in SPH algorithm. The
interaction forces between the solid particles and the structure phases are
computed using the linear contact model in DEM. The proposed model is
capable of simulating simultaneously fluid-structure interaction, particleparticle
interaction and fluid-particle interaction, with good agreement
between complicated hybrid numerical methods and experimental results
being achieved. Finally, two engineering problems in injection moulding and
3D printing process are carried out to demonstrate the capability of the integrated particle model for simulating fluid-solid interaction problems with
the occurrence of structural failure.