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Smooth particle hydrodynamics: Status and future potential

Article  in  Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics An International Journal · January 2007

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2007.013000

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70 Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, Vol. 7, Nos. 2/3/4, 2007

Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future

potential

Paul W. Cleary*, Mahesh Prakash, Joseph Ha,

Nick Stokes and Craig Scott
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences,
Private Bag 10, Clayton South, VIC 3169, Australia
E-mail: Paul.Cleary@csiro.au E-mail: Mahesh.Prakash@csiro.au
E-mail: Joseph.Ha@csiro.au E-mail: Nick.Stokes@csiro.au
E-mail: Craig.Scott@csiro.au
*Corresponding author

Abstract: SPH is a powerful mesh free method that is now able to solve very complex
multi-physics flow and deformation problems in a broad number of fields. This paper
concentrates on the use of SPH to simulate a broad range of complex industrial fluid
flow problems. These include free surface fluid flow for the generation of digital content,
geophysical flows such as volcanic lava flows and tsunamis, several types of die casting
(gravity, high pressure and ingot casting), resin transfer moulding and flow in porous media,
mixing of particulates in liquid, pyrometallurgy and slurry flow in semi-autogenous grinding
mills. The strengths and weaknesses of SPH will be explored and future opportunities for using
the method to make major modelling advances are discussed.

Keywords: smoothed particle hydrodynamics; free surface fluid flow; die casting; ingot casting;
tsunamis and flooding; dam break; particulate-fluid mixing; reacting gas-fluid-solid flows;
mineral processing fluid flow.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Cleary, P.W., Prakash, M., Ha, J., Stokes, N.
and Scott, C. (2007) ‘Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential’, Progress in
Computational Fluid Dynamics, Vol. 7, Nos. 2/3/4, pp.70–90.

Biographical notes: Paul Cleary received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Monash
University in 1988. He joined CSIRO in 1991 working in the area of industrial CFD. This CFD
group, which he now leads, develops and applies novel computational methods such as DEM and
SPH to industrial, mineral processing and geophysical flow problems involving fluids and
particulate solids.

Mahesh Prakash is a Research Scientist at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences,

Australia. His research interests include application of grid-free methods to industrial
flow problems, turbulence modelling using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and
non-Newtonian flow modelling using SPH.

Joseph Ha is a research scientist at the CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences.

He is interested in applying computational methods to solve industrial problems. His research
interests include wave propagation, combustion, turbulence, metal forming, two-phase flow and
smoothed particle hydrodynamics.

Nick Stokes is an emeritus chief research scientist at CSIRO Mathematical and information
sciences. He has ongoing interests in algorithm development for SPH and DEM.

Craig Scott is a Computational Scientist at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences,

Australia. His research interests include the development of object oriented software frameworks,
tools and algorithms for high performance computing, with a focus on particle-based simulations.

1 Introduction approximations. The other is based on kernel based

interpolation such as smoothed particle hydrodynamics.
Mesh free methods have attracted much attention recently.
SPH is commonly described as a ‘particle’ method
Two distinct directions are followed by these methods.
for modelling coupled fluid flows, solid structure
One is based on field approximations such as radial basis
deformation and heat transfer. The particles represent
functions, element free Galerkin and moving least square

Copyright © 2007 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential
‘blobs’ of discretised fluid or solids that move around in
response to the fluid or solid stresses produced by the
interaction with other particles. Importantly, SPH does not
use any fixed grids or meshes to track the fluid or
calculate the fluid velocities. Formally, SPH is a Lagrangian
continuum method for solving systems of partial differential
equations. The fluid (or solid) is discretised and the
properties of each of these fluid/solid elements are attributed
to their centres, which are then interpreted as particles. SPH
uses an interpolation kernel to smooth the values of any
information held by the particles giving smooth continuous
interpolated fields (e.g., smooth density or pressure fields
from the discrete values of density and pressure at the
particles). These fields are used in the solution of the
appropriate governing equations.
SPH was originally developed in the 1970s to solve
compressible astrophysical problems (see Gingold and
Monaghan, 1977). The method has been developed
extensively over the past three decades to solve a broad
array of such astrophysical problems (for details see a recent
review article by Monaghan (2005)) and has become one of
the standard techniques for modelling astrophysical fluid
flow (e.g., Evrard, 1988; Hernquist and Katz, 1989;
Couchman et al., 1995). The method has also been extended
to incompressible enclosed flows (Monaghan, 1994; Cleary
and Monaghan, 1993; Morris et al., 1997; Cummins and
Rudman, 1999). Examples of application include heat
conduction (Cleary and Monaghan, 1999), natural
convection in a cavity and Rayleigh-Benard convective
instability (Cleary, 1998). Other applications involving free
surface flows have also been solved using the SPH method.
These applications include a dam and the generation
of a wave in two dimensions in Monaghan (1994), high
pressure die casting, gravity die-casting and ingot casting
(see Cleary, 1997; Cleary et al., 2000, 2002, 2003; Cleary
and Ha, 2000, 2001, 2003; Ha et al., 1999; Grandfield et al.,
2003; Prakash et al., 2005a).
The flexibility and Lagrangian nature of SPH has
been exploited successfully to model a wide range of
problems. These include viscoelastic (Ellero et al., 2002)
and elastoplastic flow (Chen, et al., 2001; Gray et al., 2001),
magnetohydrodynamics (Meglicki, 1994; Price and
Monaghan, 2004a; Price and Monaghan, 2004b), explosion
(Liu et al., 2003a, 2003b), powder flow (Sugino and
Yuu, 2002), green water (Gomez-Gesteira et al., 2005),
solidification (Monaghan et al. 2005), turbulence
(Monaghan, 2002) and solid fragmentation (Libersky et al.,
1997; Parshikov et al., 2000; Rabczuk and Eibl, 2003).
Controlled but simplified small scale experiments are
often performed in laboratories and this data can be used
for careful and rigorous validation. Examples of such
validation for SPH include gravity currents on a ramp by
Monaghan et al. (1999), solitary waves breaking on a beach
by Monaghan and Kos (1999) and the Scott Russell’s wave
generator by Monaghan and Kos (2000). See Monaghan
(2005) for references to many other validation examples.
The SPH method and its application to solving
industrial problems has been a key focus of the CFD group
71
at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences for
the past 15 years. Industrial applications are typically
incompressible, partially enclosed but with critically
important free surface behaviour including wave
propagation, fragmentation and splashing. They are also
often coupled to one or more other physical processes
(such as multi-phase, heat transfer, solidification, curing,
porous media and MHD). SPH is ideally suited for solving
many of these problems and often has intrinsic advantages
over traditional grid based methods. Validation is more
difficult for complex industrial fluid flow applications and
our validation efforts have been focused on ingot casting,
high pressure and low pressure die casting. In this paper, we
briefly review the SPH method (as used by us) and then
present recent results from several challenging industrial
problems, highlighting the advantages of SPH. Finally, we
will comment on future applications and areas where we see
SPH having strong potential for significantly extending the
boundaries of what is currently possible with conventional
CFD simulation.
2 SPH model description
A brief summary of the SPH method is presented here.
For more comprehensive details refer to Monaghan (1992).
The interpolated value of a function A at any position r can
be expressed using SPH smoothing as:
Ab
A(r ) = ∑ mb W (r − rb , h). (1)
b ρb
where mb and rb are the mass and density of particle b and
the sum is over all particles b within a radius 2h of r. Here
W(r, h) is a C2 spline based interpolation or smoothing
kernel with radius 2h that approximates the shape of a
Gaussian function. The gradient of the function A is given
by differentiating the interpolation Equation (1) to give:
Ab
∇A(r ) = ∑ mb ∇W (r − rb , h). (2)
b ρb
Using these interpolation formulae and suitable finite
difference approximations for second order derivatives, one
is able to convert parabolic partial differential equations
into ordinary differential equations for the motion of the
particles and the rates of change of their properties.
The SPH continuity equation, taken from Monaghan
(1992, 1994), is:
dρ a
= ∑ mb ( v a − v b ) ⋅ ∇Wab (3)
dt b
where ρa is the density of particle a with velocity va and mb
is the mass of particle b. We denote the position vector
from particle b to particle a by rab = ra – rb and let
Wab = W(rab, h) be the interpolation kernel with smoothing
length h evaluated for the distance |rab|. This form of the
continuity equation is Galilean invariant (since the positions
and velocities appear only as differences), has good
72 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott
numerical conservation properties and is not affected by free
surfaces or density discontinuities. The use of this form of
the continuity equation is very important for predicting free
surface flows.
As two particles approach each other, their relative
velocity is negative (as is the gradient of the kernel) so that
there is a positive contribution to dρa/dt. If this rate of
change is positive then the density of particle a rises,
leading to a positive pressure that pushes the particles
apart again. If two particles move apart, then their densities
decrease creating a negative pressure that pulls the particles
back towards each other. This interplay of velocity and
density/pressure ensures that the particle remains ‘on
average’ equally spaced and that the density is close to
uniform, so that the fluid is close to incompressible.
The momentum equation when converted to SPH form
becomes the acceleration for each particle a:
dv a  P P 
= g − ∑ mb  b2 + a2 
dt b  ρb ρ a 
(4)
ξ 4µ a µb v ab rab 
−  ∇ aWab
ρ a ρb ( µ a + µb ) rab2 + η 2 
where Pa and µa are pressure and viscosity of particle a and
vab = va – vb. Here ξ is a factor associated with the viscous
term; Cleary (1996), η is a small parameter used to smooth
out the singularity at rab = 0 and g is gravity.
Since the SPH method used here is quasi-compressible
one needs to use an equation of state, giving the
relationship between particle density and fluid pressure.
A suitable one is:
 ρ γ 
P = P0   − 1 (5)
 ρ 0  
where P0 is the magnitude of the pressure and ρ0 is the
reference density. For water or molten liquids we use γ = 7.
This pressure is then used in the SPH momentum
Equation (4) to give the particle motion. The pressure scale
factor P0 is given by:
γ P0
= 100 V 2 = cs2 (6)
ρ0
where V is the characteristic or maximum fluid velocity.
This ensures that the density variation is less than 1% and
the flow can be regarded as incompressible.
The SPH heat equation is based on the internal energy
one developed in Cleary and Monaghan (1999), but
modified to use an enthalpy formulation for solidifying
metals (see Cleary et al., 1998) and including contributions
from viscous heating.
dH a 4mb ka kb r ⋅∇ W
=∑ Tab ab2 a 2 ab2
dt b ρ a ρ b k a + kb (rab + η )
(7)
2mbξ µ a µb r ⋅∇ W
−∑ (ν ab + rab ) 2 ab2 a 2 ab2
b ρ a ρ b ( µ a + µb ) (rab + η )
where the first summation is the heat conduction term and
the second summation is the viscous heating. The enthalpy
per unit mass is defined by:
T
H = ∫ c p (θ )dθ + L[1 − f s (T )] (8)
0
where cp is the temperature dependent specific heat, L is
the latent heat and fs(T) is the volume fraction of material
that is solid at temperature T, kb is the conductivity, and
Tab = Ta – Tb.
Equation (7) has an explicit conductivity which can be
temperature dependent and ensures that heat flux is
automatically continuous across material interfaces, such as
between a die and a liquid metal. This allows multiple
materials with substantially different conductivities and
specific heats to be accurately simulated.
To simulate confined or partially confined fluid flow,
such as is typically found in industrial and geophysical fluid
flows, the modelling of physical boundaries is important.
Boundaries in SPH can be modelled in a range of ways, but
here we use approximately evenly spaced SPH particles at
which a Lennard-Jones type force (a very steep polynomial
variation of force with displacement) is applied in the
normal direction. In the tangential direction, the particles are
included in the summation for the shear stress using
Equation (4) (with the pressure gradient term set to zero) to
give non-slip boundary conditions on the walls. Details are
contained in Cleary and Monaghan (1993). Boundary
particles are created by generating triangular meshes
from either Computer Aided Design (CAD) models
of the geometry for industrial applications or from
topographic surfaces in the form of Digital Terrain
Models (DTM) for geophysical and coastal engineering
applications. This approach is flexible and powerful and
with some care, allows good representation of nearly any
boundary surfaces.
3 Free surface flows
In this section, we will consider one interesting application
of SPH. It is recognised that the animation and rendering of
fluid is a challenging problem in computer graphics.
To obtain photo-realism in the animation of fluid,
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is increasingly used
to provide the required degree of realism. Realistic
animation of fluid using SPH consists of three parts;
numerical simulation of the physical flow by SPH,
 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential
generation of high quality surface meshes with specific
required properties from the SPH particle locations; and
rendering of the images (typically using a ray tracing
method, which in this case was POVRAY). Three examples
of our recent work in this area are presented below; water
flooding a stairway, water flooding a corridor and the
pouring water into a glass.
3.1 Water flooding a stairway
The dimension of the stairway is 1.8 m wide, 3.4 m deep
and 4.4 m high. The top of the stairs is connected to a
corridor which is 5 m long, 0.5 m wide and 1.6 m high.
The fluid viscosity used was 0.01 Pa s. Water is injected
from one end of the corridor at 4 m/s to simulate the source
of flooding. The water initially floods the corridor. When
the water reaches the entrance to the stairway, some of it
flows on down the corridor and some of it surges down into
the stairwell. When the water hits the end of the corridor,
it is deflected upwards and back in the direction of the
source in the form or a breaking wave. The two opposing
streams collide near entrance to the stairway and create a
crest. Initially the crest is very large and fast moving but
decreases in size and becomes almost stationary towards the
end of the simulation. Figure 1 shows six views of the scene
at two different stages of the flow into the stairwell.
Figure 1 Four views of water flooding a stairway at two
different stages of flooding
73
The simulation was carried out using a particle size of
15 mm. At the start of the simulation, there were 331,860
boundary particles. This number increases by 154,363 for
every second of simulation time. By 8.48 s of simulation
time, the total number of particles was 1,639,950 making it
a large simulation. The computation was carried out on a
3199 MHz Intel Xeon CPU with 4126 MB of memory and
had a run time of 558 hours. There are 418 frames in the
animation up to 8.48 s of simulation time. The simulation
time between consecutive frames is 0.02 s. The total CPU
time used for surface mesh generation was 328 hours on a
1300 MHz Itanium 2 CPU. The rendering of the animation
frames with four views was 356 hours on an Itanium 2.
3.2 Water flooding a T junction corridor
The second example involves the flooding of a T junction
corridor. The viewer is located at the base of the T looking
up towards the two side branches at the top of the T.
The two side branches are 2.5 m high, 1.0 m wide and 2.0 m
long whereas the central corridor is 2.5 m high 3.0 m wide
and 6.0 m long. The fluid viscosity was 0.01 Pa s. A wall of
water is generated in each of the side corridor moving at
high speed towards the middle of the T. The simulation is
carried out using 50 mm particles. The number of particles
increases over time, with 800,000 particles present after 5 s
of simulation time. This took about 12 days on a single
processor 667 MHz alpha workstation.
Figure 2 shows the flooding process. Each of the surging
walls of water break forming two waves, one near the
ground and one high in the air. These are symmetric and
collide in the middle of the far end of the T, as seen in the
first frame of Figure 2. The colliding waves propel water
down the central corridor towards the viewer. The collision
of the upper waves generates a hollow swirling tube of
water that jets along the corridor, quickly collapsing into the
main flood surging along the floor.
Figure 2 Progressive flooding of a corridor
74 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott
There is substantial splashing near the junction leading to a
choppy and very agitated free surface of water flowing
towards the viewer (third frame). The water then reaches the
solid wall at the base of the T and can be seen rising up to
form a breaking wave that then surges back along the
corridor. At this point the viewer becomes submerged by the
rising flood waters.
3.3 Pouring fluid into a glass
The third example is a quasi-benchmark type of problem in
the digital content industry. It is the filling of a glass with a
liquid such as water or milk. The glass is 60 mm high and
56 m in diameter and is filled by an obliquely oriented jet
(of diameter 10 mm) generated above and to the side of the
glass and initially moving at 0.6 m/s. The fluid viscosity
used was 0.01 Pa s. The simulation used 0.5 mm particles.
The number of particles reached 300,000 after 2.25 s of
simulation time.
Figure 3 shows some snapshots from the filling of the
glass. In the first frame the jet can be seen accelerating and
thinning as it moves on a parabolic trajectory and collides
with the side of the glass about half way up. The water
spreads out into a fan like sheet around the curved surface
of the glass. The divergent sheet is unstable and breaks up
with an identifiable ligament structure consisting of rope
like bands of fluid with gaps in between. These appear to be
a wave like instability with the ligaments of fluid being at
equal radial distances from the contact point with the glass.
This means that the ligament structure has a circular arc
shape, being lower directly below the incidence point of the
jet and higher on the sides. The fragmentation pattern of the
water is very transient.
Figure 3 Pouring fluid into a glass
In the second frame, the ligament structure in the spreading
fan of fluid is completely established. The fluid flows over
the bottom of the glass as thin sheet. This reaches the far
wall, is deflected up and falls back as a breaking wave
(or mini-bore) and flows back. The flow on the base is
highly three dimensional with fluid flowing back
predominantly around the sides of the base of the glass.
When the return flow reaches the original jet of fluid,
the resulting collision generates a surge of waves across the
free surface leading to the formation and ejection of a large
droplet from the water in the middle of the base of the glass.
In the final frame, the water level can be seen rising,
but the flow is still not quiescent with significant internal
recirculation generated by the fast flow of the thin sheet of
water down the side of the glass under the free surface and
across the base of the glass, then welling up at the far side
and generating almost standing waves on the free surface.
As the glass fills, this effect steadily weakens.
3.4 Geophysical flows
Many problems in environmental sciences involve the
large-scale movement of solids and fluids. They are often
irregular in their timing, difficult to observe and measure,
involve multiple types of physical process on a broad range
of spatial and temporal scales and can be catastrophic in
their consequences. Computational modelling can play an
important role both in helping to understand the nature of
the fundamental processes involved, and in predicting the
detailed outcomes of various types of event in specific
locations. Environmental fluid and particulate flows can be
characterised as large scale and transient, with complex free
surface behaviour upon geometrically complex topography.
They typically also involve multiple types of physics on
multiple scales with significant convective transport.
Particle based modelling methods have specific advantages
over traditional grid or mesh based continuum methods for
these types of problems. These include highly accurate and
non-diffusive prediction of complex free surface behaviour
including wave motion, fragmentation and splashing;
accurate and automatic convection of material; and the
straight-forward inclusion of multi-scale multi-physics.
3.5 Flow after a dam break
One geophysical flow that can be simulated using SPH is a
dam-break. Typically such simulations are carried out with
two dimensional shallow water equations using a finite
difference method (e.g., Frazao et al., 1999; Zoppou and
Roberts, 2000). With these approximations, it becomes
impossible to resolve the detailed three dimensional features
of the flow, which can be important in many dam-break
situations, particularly when the topography is complex.
This is a traditional test problem for SPH and generally is
used also in two dimensions (but now in a vertical rather
than horizontal plane) to examine the flow of an initial
square of water along a horizontal flat plane (Monaghan,
1994) With SPH it is now easy to resolve the full three
dimensional flow features of a dam-break using real
topography from DTM resulting in more accurate
predictions of propagation time of the flood wave and the
maximum height to which the water reaches the banks
(Prakash et al., 2001).
 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential
3.6 Tsunami inundation of the coastline
A tsunami is a series of waves generated by an impulsive
disturbance that vertically displaces the water column.
Earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions and explosions
can generate tsunamis. Tsunamis can savagely attack
coastlines, causing devastating property damage and loss of
life, as evidenced in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December
2004. The extent of damage depends on the strength of the
wave generated by the tsunami. Therefore, the prediction of
these waves can prove to be extremely useful in minimising
the loss of life and property.
Simulations of a single tsunami wave were carried out
using SPH on a coastal section of a real topography
(Cleary and Prakash, 2004), as shown in Figure 4. Fluid
particles (the blue region in the foreground) were set up on a
portion of the topography to represent the ocean. The ocean
bed slopes away from the coast with the depth of water
increasing with distance from the coast. The interpolation
length for the particles was fixed at 13.0 m with the particle
spacing being 10 m (on average). The total number of fluid
particles used in the simulation was around 140,000.
Figure 4 Tsunami inundation of a coastline
75
The tsunami wave was generated by a wave-maker and has
initial height of 40 m and a speed of 54 km/h. This is a 3D
analogy of the 2D wave-maker simulated in Monaghan
(1994). Figure 4 shows the key stages of the tsunami with
initial inundation of the nearby coastline, later inundation of
the more remote coast, early receding of the floodwaters
close by and the significant flow of water up along the main
protected valley. By 120 s, (Fig. 4(e)), the surge of water in
the main valley has continued inland along both forks and
can now be seen passing beyond the top of the viewing
frame. This represents a travel distance inland in excess of
2 km along a valley that was almost completely protected
from the original incident wave by the large mountain spur
in between. This type of behaviour was observed in the
Indian Ocean 2004 tsunami in regions where the bathymetry
structure leads to focusing of the waves into such regions.
3.7 Volcanic lava flow
Although most volcanic lava flows do not result in loss of
human life, they can potentially cause enormous damage to
property. Lava flows can bury homes and agricultural land
under tens of meters of hardened black rock. People are
rarely able to use land buried by lava flows or sell it for
more than a small fraction of its previous worth. Typical
examples of lava flows are from the Kilauea and Mauna Loa
Volcanoes in Hawaii. The speed at which lava moves across
the ground depends on several factors, including
• type of lava erupting and its viscosity
• steepness of the ground over which it travels
• whether the lava flows as a broad sheet, through
a confined channel, or down a lava tube
• the rate of lava production
• its rate of cooling/solidification.
Numerical simulation is again a useful tool with which to
evaluate various scenarios. Earlier simulation efforts have
used grid based methods such as the finite volume method
as in Itoh et al. (2000) or the finite element method as in
Klingelhöfer et al. (1999), using either a 2D model or a
simplified 3D model. Gray and Monaghan (2004) used SPH
to investigate the cracking of magma chambers. Here, we
present a 3D simulation using SPH on real topography.
The thermal model includes heat conduction within
the lava, conductive heat losses to the ground and radiative
heat losses from the exposed free surface of the lava. The
solidification model uses a temperature dependent viscosity
and is fully coupled to the fluid flow. See Cleary and
Prakash (2004) for further details. The variable viscosity
model of Klingelhöfer et al. (1999) was used to give the
variation of viscosity with temperature, with properties
chosen to match Hawaiian basaltic lava. The eruption
temperature of the lava was fixed at 1500 K and the ground
temperature was fixed at 300 K. At 1500 K, the viscosity of
the lava is then about 20 Pa s. Even a modest decrease
in temperature to about 1200 K causes the viscosity to
76 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott
increase to about 860 Pa s, which significantly affects its
ability to flow.
Figure 5 shows the progression of the lava flow from the
time when the molten lava is first ejected from a crater near
the coast. The lava colour shows its temperature with red
indicating high temperature and low viscosity (starting at
about 1500 K and 20 Pa s) while black indicates a lower
temperature of around 800 K with a high viscosity. The
ground is shaded by altitude so that the topography can be
seen, with black being high altitude and dark grey being low
altitude. The surrounding ‘sea’ is coloured blue.
Figure 5 Front view of lava flow with variable viscosity model.
Dark grey indicates high temperature and low
viscosity; black indicates a lower temperature and high
viscosity
Soon after the start (Fig. 5(a)) the lava spurts out of the
crater at a high speed and forms a circular dome of fluid that
rises up and begins to fall back to the ground due to gravity.
At this stage there is very little cooling of the lava which
remains around 1500 K. In Figure 5(b), the lava has
reached ground level, spreads across the topography and
collects in the nearby valleys of the mountainous terrain.
At this stage the lava is still very hot and free flowing and
has lost little of its momentum. In Figure 5(c), the lava has
substantially filled two of the nearby valleys and the leading
edges of the lava are approaching the sea. The speed of the
lava front has started to decline due to the cooling and the
consequent increase in viscosity. Lava has started to collect
in a third, more distant and deeper valley on the right.
Figure 5(d) shows the progression of the lava into the ‘sea’.
The shading of the lava in the last third of its passage to the
sea is darker, illustrating the cooling of the material. Much
of the lava is close to black when it is deposited in the ‘sea’,
indicating that its temperature is approximately 800 K and it
is close to solidifying. As the lava solidifies and its velocity
decreases, fresh lava from behind catches up to the leading
front and flows over these earlier layers leading to a
thickening of the lava sheets.
4 Die casting
The following section presents some examples of our
application of the SPH method to the simulation of
industrial flow problems in die casting which has
been a significant area of focus for our SPH development.
Three specific die casting processes are presented – gravity
die casting, high pressure die casting and ingot casting.
These applications illustrate the particular advantages of
SPH over grid based methods. These include complex free
surface and material interfacial behaviour are modelled
easily and naturally; there are no constraints imposed
on the geometry of system; and the physical equations
(such as solidification) can be applied to individual
particles. In particular, high pressure die casting involves
momentum-dominated flows with highly complex free
surface behaviour which are extremely difficult to simulate
with conventional numerical methods.
4.1 Gravity Die Casting (GDC)
Gravity Die Casting (GDC) processes are capable of making
complicated high integrity components, such as wheels,
cylinder heads, engine blocks and brake callipers, at lower
cost than most other casting methods. Cycle times for GDC
are shorter than for the sand casting process leading to
larger quantities of castings produced per unit time. Surface
finish and internal quality (particularly pertaining to
porosity) are also better using GDC. Improvements
to both product quality and process productivity can be
brought about through improved die design. These include
developing more effective control of the die filling and
thermal performance.
 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential 77

Ha et al. (1999) compared isothermal SPH simulations Figure 6 Flow pattern showing overflow of metal from the top
with water analogue modelling of gravity die casting for a half of the spout for second stage optimised wheel
design at 30 tonnes/hr. Top frame shows fluid coloured
complex die in two different orientations. The SPH
by velocity and the bottom frame at a later time is
simulations were found to be able to very well capture the coloured by oxide content
free surface wave behaviour, jet oscillation and the fine
details of the flow. Ha et al. (2000) then compared SPH and
MAGMAsoft simulation results of GDC with experimental
results from X-ray imaging. The X-ray imaging technique
was successfully developed to visualise the flow of molten
aluminum in a predominantly 2D steel die. The SPH
simulation results were again seen to capture much more
closely the fine detail of the free surface motion, including
plume shape and the correct relative heights of the surface
levels in the die cavity. Both these validation tests indicated
that the SPH predictions were of high accuracy and this
gives us confidence when applying the method to the other
die casting processes.

4.2 Ingot casting

This process is used to turn the stream of primary
aluminium from a smelter into transportable ingots
with the best quality (as judged by their appearance) at the
lowest possible cost. Typically, this involved the flow of
aluminium from a launder into a rotating wheel which has
external nozzles that dispense measured volumes of liquid
aluminium into ingot moulds that move at constant speed in
a line below the wheel caster.
Significant performance improvements have been made
using a new wheel filling system that resulted from a
combination of SPH modelling and pilot scale testing.
This work is reported in more detail in Prakash et al.
(2005a). The SPH modelling was used as the primary design
tool, passing through several design iterations to understand
the flow fundamentals and to progressively improve
performance. The best concept from the simulation design
stage was then refined through a detailed program of pilot
scale testing and a final round of SPH simulation. The new
ingot casting wheel design is now able to operate at 50%
higher throughput with an expected reduction in the oxide
content by about 53% compared to that of existing designs.
Figure 6 shows two snapshots of the flow of aluminium
through the new casting wheel. The line of ingot moulds are
moving to the right and the wheel is rotating clockwise.
Aluminium flows from the launder located behind the wheel
(which is made transparent so that the launder area is
visible) into the wheel, through the innovative nozzles and
into the dies. This design minimises oxide formation by
minimising splashing, minimising free surface exposure to
the air and imparting as little momentum to the aluminium
as it enters the ingot mould as possible.
4.3 High Pressure Die Casting (HPDC)
High Pressure Die Casting (HPDC) is an important method
for manufacturing high volume, low cost metal components.
Molten metal is injected at both high speed (30–100 m/s)
and under high pressure through complex gate and runner
systems and into the die. In order to obtain homogeneous
cast components with minimal porosity and void formation
one needs to have a good die design with accurate
positioning of air vents which enable the release of most of
the entrapped air. The position of the air vents, in, turn
depends on the gating system used and the geometry of the
die. Numerical simulation offers a powerful and cost
effective way to study the effectiveness of different die
designs and filling processes.
A key advantage that SPH has over other competing
methods for modelling some industrial heat and mass flows
is that complex free surface and material interface
behaviour, including fragmentation, can be modelled easily
and naturally with low resolutions and produce accurate
predictions with no mass lost or numerical diffusion of the
interfaces. The applications of SPH to 2D HPDC were
reported by Cleary et al. (2000) and Ha and Cleary (2000).
These SPH results compared favourably with water
78 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott

analogue experiments of Schmid and Klein (1995). Figure 8 Filling of an engine rocker cover by HPDC
The applications of SPH to 3D HPDC were reported by
Cleary and Ha (2000, 2001, 2003), Cleary et al. (2002), and
Ha et al. (2004). Ha et al. (2003) compared the 3D SPH and
MAGMAsoft simulation results of an automotive piston
head with water analogue experimental results. The
Magmasoft predictions were at most only qualitatively
indicative, whereas the SPH predictions showed good
agreeemnt with the experiments, particularly in predicting
the flow of liquid into different parts of the die, the relative
strengths of jets and the time at which back filling flow
trapped air in pockets within the die. The SPH results were
better able to capture the fine detail of the fluid motion and
splashing, particularly the relative rates of flow around
sharp bends and through thin sections.

4.3.1 Rocker cover

Figure 7 shows the casting configuration for an engine
rocker cover. It is about 750 mm × 250 mm in area with
3 mm section thickness. A tangential runner system feeds
fluid through a long 2 mm high gate at a speed of 12 m/s.
The particle size used for this simulation was 1.25 mm.

Figure 7 Geometry of a rocker over

4.3.2 Cross member

Figure 8 shows the filling of this rocker cover. The long
gate has an area that is similar to the runner cross sectional
area, so the fluid experiences little accelaration in the gate
region. This results in little immediate splashing and
fragmentation of the fluid upon entry into the die. However,
the complex stepped contours of the die lead to long lived
void regions. This is essentially the result of the diverging
flow from the gate being unable to maintain a uniform front,
so fluid is not able to flow into the more protected regions
of the die produced by the steps in the shape. Note that there
is also clear evidence of preferential race tracking of fluid
around the perimeter of the rocker cover. By 250 ms,
the die is substantially filled with critical voids remaining
in two locations, one just to the side of the gate as seen
in the fourth frame and one on the far side of the casting
where recirculating fluid has created a long lived roughly
elliptical void.
Figure 9 shows the die and Figure 10 shows the filling of a
structural cross bar support. This part consists of several
sections with strengthening ribs and various cut outs. There
are nine gates distributed along the leading edge of the
component and these are fed by a tangential runner system
with shock absorbers at the ends. The gate height is 2.6 mm
and the particle size used for this simulation was 1.7 mm.
The fluid sprays out from the gate along clear preferential
pathways, leaving regions with long enduring voids on the
sides of the central body where insufficient fluid can be
supplied by this runner system. By 65 ms, the leading fluid
reaches the fair side of the die and much of the structure on
the near side of the die is substantially filled. The final area
to fill is in the middle of the far side of the die. This is a
structurally critical location where porosity is highly
undesirable. The simulation shows that, despite the presence
of a large central bridge which is intended to channel fluid
into this region much earlier, the region is difficult to fill
and could be subject to cold shuts, joining problems where
the fronts of fluid meet from either side and from trapped
porosity.
 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential
Figure 9 Geometry of cross member
Figure 10 Filling of structural cross member by HPDC
4.3.3 Differential cover
Here, the filling of an automotive differential cover is
presented. The differential cover is about 250 × 250 mm in
area and has a section thickness of about 6.5 mm. Liquid
aluminium is fed into the die cavity through the curved
gates that are 1.5 mm high. The particle size used in this
SPH simulation is 0.75 mm. When the cavity is completely
filled, the total number of particles is about 900,000.
Figure 11 shows the filling pattern. Aluminium enters
the die cavity through the four gates attached to a
conventional tangential runner system with shock absorbers.
After entry into the die cavity, two of the streams quickly
merge leaving three main streams moving directly away
from the gate following the contours of the part and with
long lasting voids in between. At 20 ms, some leading
fragments of liquid begin to collect in the circular structure
on the right of the die (when viewed from above).
Significant amounts of fragmented fluid are now seen to
collect in the raised ‘tower’ on the left side of the die.
By 50 ms there has been significant back filling and the rear
third of the die is completely filled. The transition region
between the fast flowing streams moving away from the
gate and the back filling fluid occurs where the fluid colour
(representing speed) abruptly changes from yellow to blue.
79
The fluid in the blue slow moving region has a low void
fraction. The tower structure is substantially filled as is the
base plate on the opposite side. The last remaining area to
be filled is the central void region closest to the runner
system.
Figure 11 Filling of differential cover during HPDC
4.3.4 Coupled solidification and flow
The previous simulations were isothermal and the large cast
volume ensured that there was little solidification and
therefore viscosity variation throughout the filling. In the
next example, which is small and this, the solidification is
crucially important. The filling simulation was therefore
performed using a fully coupled fluid and heat flow model.
Conduction was predicted in both the solidifying liquid
metal and into and through the die. Temperature dependent
material properties, particularly viscosity and the release of
latent heat were included.
The item to be cast is a simple coaster which was
9 × 9 cm and 2 mm in thickness. A tangential runner with a
diamond shaped insert in the middle was used. The gate was
0.9 mm thick and a particle size of 0.6 mm was used.
Figure 12 shows the fluid temperature of the metal flow
during filling. All the fluid is shown on the right side of the
die, so the colouring shows the surface properties. On the
left, only the material in the bottom half of the die is shown.
The temperature shown on the top left surface therefore
belongs to fluid in the mid-plane of the die. Surrounding
the fluid shown here is the solid die, but it is not shown.
For the coupled thermal flow, heat conduction from the
liquid metal into the die is critical since it determines the
solidification and therefore viscosity of the fluid. This has a
major impact on the predicted fill pattern.
80 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott
Figure 12 Die cast filling of a coaster with fluid coloured
by temperature using a coupled flow and
solidification model
Once the tangential runner fills and pressurises, fluid is
sprayed out into the die on 45 degree angled trajectories
towards the side walls. Liquid metal builds up along the side
walls slowing as it cools and becomes more viscous. When
the metal makes contact with the colder top and bottom
walls of the die, the cooling and solidification accelerate.
The central parts of the die cavity are filled with a fairly
sparse but highly fragmented hot liquid metal. Along the
centreline of the die, splashing liquid metal from either side
collide and stick to the top and bottom walls forming a
fragmented line of prematurely solid metal. The build up of
metal on the sides of the die leads to a back filling flow
towards the gate. At 60 ms there are four distinct unfilled
areas; a large section directly in front of the gate, one near
each of the side walls towards the end of the die and one
along the centreline of the die directly adjacent to the end
wall. At 80 ms, the back filling flow has closed the large
void region adjacent to the gate, but the increasing viscosity
of the solidifying metal makes it difficult for the fluid
to flow into the last two remaining large scale voids.
Eventually they do fill in this case, but this casting was
close to being a cold shut.
5 Resin transfer moulding for composite
manufacture
There exists a high degree of commonality of issues
between injection moulding, RTM and other composite
manufacturing processes. Similar techniques can also be
used for plastic injection moulding, wax casting for creating
moulds for investment casting. Many of the issues are also
common to the just discussed die casting areas.
The key physics to be modelled include fluid flow,
curing of the polymer, heat transfer in the resin, the carbon
fibre preform and the mould, the exothermic nature of the
curing reaction and the effect of the carbon fibre porous
media on the flow. In RTM, the viscosity changes are
complex, since the viscosity decreases with increasing
temperature but increases with the state of cure. The cure
rate increases with temperature so a higher operating
temperature leads to lower initial viscosity (and therefore
easier flow through the preform) but higher viscosity later
(leading to more difficulty in fill). It is imperative that the
part be filled before the viscosity increases to such an extent
that the resin to flow into some sections is prevented,
leaving exposed fibre cloth.
From a modelling perspective, the key challenges are;
the discontinuity of the edge of the carbon fibre where the
domain changes from low permeability porous media to free
space (which causes significant hardship for pressure
solvers for grid based CFD methods); and the extremely
long timescales involved in the filling (hours). SPH has
been successfully used to solve this challenging problem.
Figure 13 shows an RTM experiment by Young and Lai
(1997) that has been used for validation of RTM prediction
capability. In this case, the carbon fibre preform in packed
into a thin flat mould. The domain is 80 mm high. A small
gap is left at the top (of the order of 1–4 mm) and oil is
introduced under high pressure into the free space to the left
of the porous media. The oil is able to preferentially flow
along the small gap leading to a race tracking effect. Oil
diffuses back into the perform from the filled part of the gap
leading to a very characteristic free surface shape and
defined rate of propagation. Three snapshots of this race
tracking flow, as predicted by SPH, are shown in Figure 13.
The free surface shape and speed closely resembles that
observed in the experiments.
 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential 81

Figure 13 Progress of oil through the porous media preform,
showing the strong race tracking observed in the
experiments at times t = 0.8, 1.4 and 2.1 s
This sucks solid pellets down towards the impeller.
By 1.5 s, the pellets have started to cluster near the centre of
the tank as a result of impeller starting to generate this
recirculation pattern. At 2.0 s, the pellets start being dragged
down into the fluid. The recirculating flow pattern becomes
fully established around 2.5 s and a significant proportion of
the pellets are being drawn down to the level of the
impeller. At 3.0 s, pellets are being flung outwards by the
impeller and are now being recirculated within the fluid.
This behaviour is in close agreement with the experimental
observations. This comparison is reported in more detail in
Prakash et al. (2005b).
This example clearly demonstrates the potential for
modelling multiphase systems for which the particulate
size is too large to validly use inter-penetrating fluid
approximations for the solid phase. This allows detailed
flow dynamics around each particulate to be well resolved.

Figure 14 Submergence and mixing of solid particulates in a

mixing tank for an impeller speed of 200 rpm using
a loading of 1.5 kg of 16 mm wooden pellets in a tank
of around 1 m diameter and 1 m height

6 Mixing of particulates in liquid

Mixing of particulate solids and liquids is a very important
application area. If the solids are very small (compared to
the domain size) and the particulate loadings are low
(so that the system is dilute or lightly loaded) then this type
of flow can typically be well modelled using good
conventional CFD. If, however, the particulate solids are
large or have a high loading then these methods are not
valid and the particulates need to be individually modelled.
Using conventional methods for such problems is
exceedingly expensive due to the need to re-mesh each
timestep to follow the fluid around the moving solids. SPH
with its Lagrangian nature and without the mesh restriction
is easily able to model such difficult systems.
To demonstrate this, we model a moderate loading of
reasonable size buoyant cylindrical pellets in a mixing tank
full of water and driven by a central impeller. The solid
pellets are represented by collections of SPH particles that
are constrained to move together. The forces on these
particles are determined in the same way as for fluid
particles but with an overriding constraint of rigid-body
motion. The simulations are validated by comparing the
results with physical modelling experiments that shows a
relationship between the submergence criterion of the solids
and parameters such as size of solids, solids loading and
impeller speed. The experiments were conducted using
water as the fluid and cylindrical blocks of wood with a
specific gravity of 0.5 with near identical conditions being
used for the simulations. For further details refer to
Prakash et al. (2005b).
In order to explore the behaviour of pellets at high
impeller speed, a simulation was run for a speed of
200 rpm and the flow predictions are shown in Figure 14.
The impeller generates a strong central downdraft of
water leading to a bulk recirculation flow within the tank.
82 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott

7 Pyrometallurgy: gas, fluid and solids in Figure 15. When there is no difference in densities of the
two materials, the pellets are neutrally buoyant and
The use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to model
remain in their original positions throughout the simulation
pyrometallurgical processes has traditionally been by grid
(as they should). This is independent of the inclusion of heat
based finite element or finite volume methods. These
transfer. There is very little movement of the pellets due to
simulation tools are quite useful in predicting the overall
convective heat transfer. When the pellets are much less
flow patterns and heat transfer in the molten bath. However,
dense than the surrounding liquid bath, they then float
in many pyrometallurgical processes reactive solids are
rapidly to the surface at speeds dependent on the density
added to the molten bath in the form of pellets or briquettes.
difference. The conductive and convective heat transfer is
Heat is transferred from the bath into the porous solids and
shown by the change in colour of the pellet surfaces
reaction proceeds with possible metal, slag and gaseous
(from blue to light green and towards yellow) as well as that
products being formed depending on the specific chemistry
of the surrounding fluid (from red to yellow in certain
of the system. For example, in the carbothermic reduction of
regions) as the cold pellets heat up and cool the surrounding
iron oxide pellets in slag, molten oxides, carburised iron
fluid. These simple tests show that the method produces
droplets and a carbon monoxide rich gas are formed
qualitatively sensible predictions for pellet motion and
(Street et al., 1998). It is computationally prohibitive to
heating.
simulate the individual pellets using grid-based CFD
methods (Johannessen et al., 2001). For grid-based methods Table 1 Properties for pellets and fluid in Figure 15
one would also need to incorporate complicated mesh
deformations to account for the interaction between the fluid Fluid Pellet
and solid pellets. Due to its grid-free nature SPH has the Conductivity (W/m/K) 53.0 19.0
following advantages over other CFD tools:
Specific heat (J/kg/K) 241.0 1434.0
• free surface flows can be handled easily and accurately Density (kg/m3) 5860.0 5860.0
1860.0
• solid/fluid interactions with complicated motions
of the solid parts can be simulated with few additional
computational penalties Figure 15 Motion of pellets in fluid with coupled heat transfer.
Column 1: Neutrally buoyant and Column 2: Strongly
• complicated physics can be added easily (examples buoyant pellets
include non-Newtonian rheology, solidification,
freezing, solid stress and history dependence of fluid
variables)
Since SPH has these inherent advantages we have extended
the method to include solid reactive pellets in a molten
phase bath for pyrometallurgical simulation. We summarise
the key changes and demonstrate the additional physics
(solids, gas generation and gas transport) using a series of
simple examples.

7.1 Solid pellets in a fluid with buoyancy

Solid pellets are represented by collections of SPH particles
as in the previous section. Buoyancy effects due to the
density difference between the pellets and fluid are
automatically dealt with by SPH. Thermal induced
buoyancy effects are small compared to these and are
omitted. Equations for heat transfer and species transport
are solved using fluid and solid particles with appropriate
material properties. The coupled thermal to flow and
7.2 Gas generation and gas transport in liquid
buoyancy effects described in this section is an extension to The model developed here is intended to apply to
the validated pellet motion described in the last section. reasonable volumes of small bubbles in a liquid.
Figure 15 compares the motion of pellets in the fluid A reasonable representation of such two-phase flow is an
with and without density differences between the fluid and inter-penetrating fluids model. Two separate phases,
pellets and with heat transfer included. Column 1 shows treated as continua, have their own momentum and mass
results when there is no density difference. The liquid conservation laws and interact through a drag force that
bath and pellets are coloured according to the temperature each exerts on the other. This is an extremely common
with the initially cold pellets cooling adjacent hot liquid. approach in traditional Eulerian CFD modelling of
Column 2 shows results when pellets are strongly buoyant. multiphase systems. We now implement this in an SPH
Table 1 gives the properties of the fluid and pellet for cases method. This model is subject to the same limitations of
 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential
adequacy of knowledge of bubble size distribution, bubble
loading and bubble shape and aggregation as it has in
conventional CFD.
We use the subscript l for the liquid phase and g for the
gas phase. A key unknown is the gas volume fraction ε.
We assume the density of the gas is zero so there is no
acceleration term for the gas momentum equation.
The density of the liquid is ρ. As usual v represents the
velocity, while η is the viscous stress in the liquid (assumed
unaffected by the gas). The model uses the speed of sound
in liquid, c, the liquid viscosity µ, and the bubble diameter,
d. We also assume that the gas is incompressible since
hydrostatic pressure will cause only small density
variations. The gas conservation law is then just an
advection equation:
ε1 + v g ⋅ ∇ε + ε∇ ⋅ v g = 0.
The conservation law for the liquid can be written as:
1 dP
ε l + v l ⋅∇ε = + ∇ ⋅ vl .
ρ c 2 dt
The terms on the left represent the change in gas volume for
which there is an equal change in liquid volume fraction.
The momentum equation for the gas can be simplified to:
H ( v g − v l ) + ∇P = 0
here H is the inter-phase drag term and P the pressure.
In this preliminary implementation there was no attempt
made to model the effect of bubble size. Instead a constant
drag factor H was assumed for the calculations which gave a
superficial bubble rise velocity of around 1 m/s.
The momentum equation for the liquid can be
written as:
dvl
ρ + ρ v l ⋅ ∇v l = (1 − ε )( ρ g − ∇P ) + ∇ ⋅ τ l .
dt
In order to assess the functionality of the gas generation
model explained above and buoyancy effects, further
simulations were carried out in 2D and 3D. In Figures 16
and 17, results are shown in 2D and 3D for cases neutrally
and positively buoyant pellets. The aim here is to examine
gas generation from the pellet at a specified rate and its
transport through the liquid bath. To mimic the fluid motion
generated by stirring generally done in pyrometallurgical
applications to improve mixing, there is a central updraft
generated during these simulations.
In Figure 16, the colour represents the volume fraction
of gas. It shows the generation of gas from the pellets and
its transport through the liquid bath. The gas motion through
the liquid bath and the updraft causes pellet motion even
when the pellet and the liquid bath have the same density
(see the left column of each time frame). The pellet motions
in the left column of each frame show two weak
83
recirculation patterns. This results predominantly from the
imposed central updraft. When the pellets are less dense
than the liquid bath (as is the case in the right column of
each time frame), then the recirculation is much less
noticeable. The buoyant pellets float rapidly and cluster near
the surface because they are positively buoyant. Note that
the gas motion around and above each pellet creates a
buoyant plume that tends to entrain fluid which in turn
pushes the pellet upwards. So the natural buoyancy of the
pellets is enhanced by the generation of buoyant gas plumes
from the reacting pellets.
Figure 16 Gas generation and its transport in two dimensions.
Column 1 in each time frame: neutrally buoyant
pellets a and column 2 in each time frame: pellets are
less dense than the liquid bath
(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)
Figure 17 shows an analogous rectangular tank in 3D.
The colour on the pellet surface again represents the volume
fraction of gas. In the liquid bath, the gas distribution is
represented by spheres whose size and colour show
increasing gas fraction. The larger the sphere, the higher is
the local volume fraction of gas. The flow behaviour
predicted in 3D is broadly similar to the 2D result. The two
columns of Figure 17 show the influence of density on
pellet motion with pellets. In column 1 the pellets have a
lower density than the fluid whilst in column 2 they have
the same density as the fluid. When the pellets are less
dense than the liquid bath, they rise more rapidly to the top
of the bath than for the neutrally buoyant case.
84 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott

Figure 17 Gas generation and transport in 3D. Column 1: Pellet Of course, more complex rate relationships are expected for
less dense than liquid bath; Column 2: Pellet and liquid real systems. The liquid bath starts at 1600οC. The gas
bath with same density
motion is by buoyant convection with drag as described in
the previous section. Some approximations concerning
temperature diffusion had to be made because the thermal
boundary layer associated with reaction is very thin and is
averaged out over a particle. The thermal conductivity of the
pellets was 2250 J/m2/K, and their starting temperature was
just below the ignition temperature.
Figure 18 shows the volume fraction of gas from the
chemical reaction (left column) and temperature (right
column). The pellets have different densities with some
being lower, some equal to (neutrally buoyant) and some
higher than the fluid density. As expected, the heavier
pellets sink to the bottom whilst lighter pellets float to
the top of the fluid. Neutrally buoyant pellets also rise up to
the top of the fluid surface albeit at a slower rate due to the
additional buoyancy imparted by the gas plumes generated
from the pellets. The reaction temperature does not vary far
from 1500oC for the first second, with a high influx of heat.
The pellets were purposely given arbitrary shapes.
An observation resulting from the present fairly realistic
implementation is that the gas is preferentially emitted from
protruding parts of the pellet or sections of the pellet that are
more exposed to the surrounding hot fluid. These are the
parts that heat most rapidly. In future work, the pellets
will be allowed to erode rapidly as the ongoing chemical
These observations suggest that SPH is able to qualitatively reactions consume the source materials in the pellet.
predict gas generation from pellets with good representation This behaviour is straight forward to model with a particle
of buoyancy effects and gas transport through the liquid method such as SPH.
bath, including fluid convection generated by gas plumes
rising from the pellets. Figure 18 Gas generation and transport in 3D. Column 1: Pellet
less dense than liquid bath; Column 2: Pellet and liquid
bath with same density
7.3 Chemically reactive pellets
In the previous section gas was generated from the pellets
using a prescribed rule. In this section the implementation of
actual gas generated through a chemical reaction with a
known heat of reaction (∆Hr) is presented. The densities
will be given in moles/litre. The following equations apply
for reaction of the pellet:
∂θ ∂C ∂T
ρg = r, = r , ρ cv = − DHr (13)
∂t ∂t ∂t
where ρg is the density of a gas liberated from the reaction
(mol/l), θ is the fractional gas content of the liquid (vol/vol),
C is the concentration of the product formed from the
reaction (mol/l), r is the rate of progress of the reaction
(mol/sec/m3), ρ is the density of the current material
(for the heat equation) and cv is the specific heat (J/mol/K).
Note that conductivity within the pellet has already been
accounted for in the SPH implementation. We have
assumed the following kinetic dependence of the reaction
to reflect a specific ignition temperature for this
pyrometallurgical system:
0, T < 1500∞C Whilst, the model developed contains many assumptions,
r= . (14)
5 | T − 1500 |, T > 1500∞C the results obtained to date suggest that SPH is likely
 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential 85

to be a powerful technique for simulating complex Figure 19 Slurry flow in a SAG mill, (top) flow within the
pyrometallurgical systems where simultaneous heat and grinding chamber, and (bottom) flow through the
discharge grate into the pulp lifter chamber
mass transfer with multiple phases (particularly solids) is
important. The next stage of development will see the
incorporation of specific chemistry and a more realistic
treatment of bubble size on convective flow in the system.

8 Slurry flow in sag mills

Particle breakage is an essential component of mineral
processing. The aim is to reduce the particle sizes
from those supplied to the much smaller ones required for
further processing as efficiently as possible, producing
maximum mill throughput and minimising operating
costs. An important piece of grinding equipment is a
Semi-Autogenous Grinding (SAG) mill. These are huge
rotating cylinders (up to 14 m in diameter) rotating typically
at around 80% of the critical centrifuge speed, and which
can grind up to 100,000 tonnes of rock per day by tumbling
the rocks around within the mill. This can consume up to
20 MW of power. Unfortunately, such milling processes are
believed to use less than 5% of the supplied energy for
particle breakage. However, significant opportunities exist
to improve the performance and control of such mills
using information obtained by computational modelling. 9 Future challenges and opportunities
The rocks are best modelled using the Discrete Element SPH has proved to be a versatile and adaptable tool which
Method (DEM) (see Cleary, 2004 for details) but the slurry can be extended to a broad range of physics and enables
within the mill is well modelled using SPH. realistic simulation of many very complex industrial and
Figure 19 shows the flow of slurry within the grinding geophysical flows. But there are still several challenges
chamber of the SAG mill (in the absence of the rock and confronting the method. In this section we discuss these
grinding media). This is a challenging modelling problem issues and note some interesting potential opportunities.
since the speeds are high and the geometry is complex.
The mill rotation means that the slurry is distributed over a 9.1 Turbulence
wide part of the mill shell from the toe (lowest part) to the
shoulder, where the slurry can be seen flowing off the rising SPH is ostensibly a method for simulating laminar fluid
lifter bars. The lifters crashing into the slurry pool at the toe flows, but it has been used very successfully in many fields
generate significant wave motion and splashing. The end (Monaghan, 1992) for simulating high speed turbulent
wall lifters generate significant recirculation against the flows. This occurs because SPH broadly fits within the class
ends walls which could lead to acceleration wear of these of simulation techniques known as Large Eddy Simulations
surfaces. The lower frame of Figure 19 shows the discharge (LES). The spatial interpolation used in SPH (Equation (1))
of slurry through the fine grate that separates the grinding is formally the same as the spatial filtering used to construct
chamber from the pulp lifters that are responsible for LES methods. An LES is a method that resolves all the
pouring the slurry out through the discharge port around the length scales of the fluid motion down to the grid scale and
axis of the mill on the discharge size. This is a very then uses a sub-grid scale model (for mathematical closure)
challenging problem to model because of the very fine to represent the smaller scales that cannot be resolved
geometry of the grate and the complexity of the pulp lifters, directly in the simulation. In the same way, SPH models all
discharge cone, mill shell and of the finely fragmented, fast scales of motion down to the particle resolution and relies
moving fluid flow that is generated. SPH is easily able to on numerical dissipation on the particle scale to act as a
model this system because of both its free surface default (and certainly incorrect) sub-grid scale model whose
capabilities and the absence of advection problems primary purpose is to dissipate energy cascading down to
(because of its Lagrangian nature). the small scale from the larger ones. Without a suitable
86 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott
sub-grid scale model and correct transport of energy
between different scales, SPH is not a true turbulence
method, but it is still often able to make very good
predictions for high speed turbulent flows just by reasonably
representing the of the energy transfer in the larger length
scales (without having the fine details correct).
Very few papers on turbulence modelling in SPH have
been reported in the literature. An SPH version of the alpha
turbulence model devised by Holm (1999) was formulated
for compressible flow by Monaghan (2002). Lo and Shao
(2002) demonstrated the use of a Smagorinsky type sub-grid
scale turbulence model for high velocity applications using
an incompressible SPH formulation. Violeau et al. (2001)
demonstrated two ways of modelling turbulence in the SPH
framework using an eddy viscosity assumption as well as a
Langevin or stochastic approach. A simple Poiseuille flow
was used to test their models resulting in good agreement
for velocity profiles. Despite these developments the
relationship between SPH and turbulence is far from settled,
with particular questions arising about the ability of energy
to correctly move up from the smaller scales to generate
coherent mesoscale structures.
9.2 Gas-Liquid Interaction (large density
differences)
The simulation of the interaction of gas and liquids is
currently a major challenge for the SPH method. In cases
with large density ratios, the question arises as to how the
interface should be simulated. Large density differences
typically present major challenges for most CFD methods
placing large strains on the pressure solvers, but this issue is
stronger for SPH because it is quasi-compressible. Consider
a very simple arrangement of a square box half full of water
with air above. The standard continuity equation smooths
the divergence of velocity across particles on both sides of
the material interface. A key effect of this smoothing is
that the interface is smoothed out and the sounds waves
travel easily from one material to the other. The critical
problem is that a 1% amplitude sound wave in a dense
liquid, after conserving energy and momentum, has an
amplitude equal to the density ratio once it has travelled into
the gas. For density ratios of more than 100 : 1 this leads to
catastrophic explosions in the lighter material as the sounds
waves move across the interface. What should happen is
that the sound wave should predominantly reflect from the
free surface and most of the acoustic wave energy should
remain in the reflected wave in the liquid. A small fraction
of the wave energy is transmitted into the gas and continues
on. The current continuity equation smooths the interface
out and gives a 100% transmission of the waves and
prevents the required reflections that enable the system to be
stable. Development of modifications to SPH to allow
solution of such problems would greatly extend the range of
applications to which it can be deployed and would allow
better and more accurate solutions to be calculated for
applications such as high pressure die casting where the
back pressure from the gas can affect the fluid filling and
where the trapping of gas is a key defect to be predicted.
9.3 Rheology
SPH has predominantly been used to model single phase
Newtonian fluids, but there are significant opportunities
to use its Lagrangian and free surface capabilities for
multi-phase and non-Newtonian flow problems. There has
been some usage of SPH to model viscoelastic fluids and a
larger amount of work using SPH for elastic, elastoplastic
and brittle elastic materials. There are opportunities to
extend these to more complex rheological models.
In particular the ability of SPH particles (which represent
volumes of real material) to store and carry history
information (such as shear rate or strain rate history) offers
the possibility of simplifying the implementation of many
non-Newtonian models. Of particular importance are
shear thinning or thixotropic rheologies which have broad
application from magnesium die casting, to slurries in mills
to blood flow. An important and early model should be that
of a Bingham fluid so that materials with a yield stress can
be represented.
The other rheological area is the use of inter-penetrating
fluid models (such as the algebraic slip model) for
modelling multiphase flows where the particulate are too
small to be modelled as discrete particles. This is a rich area
in conventional CFD but there are opportunities with
flows of such material where the free surface behaviour is
complex or the flow speeds are very high. Here the
Lagrangian nature of SPH has specific advantages.
Examples would range from sedimentation processes in
river systems to pyroclastic flows. An example of using
such a model to examine fine particulate separation in a
slurry using a spiral separator is given in Prakash et al.
(2005c).
9.4 Solidification and phase change
Since an SPH particle represents a specific volume of fluid,
then the properties and behaviour of this particle can be
changed in response to changes in its thermodynamic state.
Shrinkage during solidification is trivially implemented in
SPH by changing the reference density ρ0 of the particle in
the equation of state (5) according to its temperature.
As a metal cools, its density increases leading to a decreased
volume for the particle (since its mass is constant).
This automatically generates low pressures that then suck in
adjacent particles leading to highly realistic predictions of
shrinkage.
A second example of the power of SPH in solidification
is the ability to change the governing equation that applies
to a particle in response to changes in its thermodynamic
state. A liquid metal particle can participate with its
neighbours in the solution of the Navier-Stokes equation,
but once its temperature falls below its solidus (freezing)
temperature, one can freeze the particle in place and no
 Smooth particle hydrodynamics: status and future potential
longer allow it to move. This is again a very simple
operation but enables very realistic simulation of feeding in
low pressure die casting. A further extension of this idea
would be to change the governing equation from the
Navier-Stokes equation to either a viscoelastic or elastic
solid equation. This allows SPH to grow a solid or
semi-solid skin dynamically from a liquid in way that is
fully coupled to the fluid flow. This should allow simulation
of growth and interaction of the solid regions of castings
with the fluid flow in a way that enables prediction of
deformation of components during casting. This would also
allow prediction, from first principles, of the growth of air
gaps as the solidifying metal pulls away from the die walls
leading sharp decreases in the heat transfer to the die and
radically affecting the prediction of the subsequent
solidification processes. Similar advantages exist for any
other process involving phase change such a curing of
polymers and plastics.
9.5 Fluid-structure interaction
Typically, the boundaries used for simulation with SPH are
rigid. However, since SPH can also simulate elastic solids
by solving the governing equation for deviatoric stress,
it can also be used easily and naturally to simulate
fluid-structure interactions. The difference in the natural
timestep for the fluids and deforming solids coming from
the respective sound speeds means that the solid is much
stiffer and some special treatment may be required to
prevent the computational time becoming too large.
The ability to model fluid-structure interactions suggests
that SPH could be used to evaluate and optimise the use of
liquid sloshing for applications such as active control of
earthquake induced vibration of structures thus minimising
loss of life and property during an earthquake (Guzel et al.,
2005). Other important applications in this area include
simulating the interaction of breaking waves on off-shore oil
platforms and floating/tethered production vessels in order
to understand the nature and location of damage to these
structures leading to better design strategies.
9.6 Fluid-particulate interaction
An important area where the natural advantages of SPH
are likely to have a large impact is the modelling of
fluid-particulate interactions. This could be a pure SPH
implementation as was done with the mixing tank earlier in
this paper, or it could involve the coupling of the SPH fluid
flow to Discrete Element Method style solid particles.
The key advantage that SPH has here is that it can calculate
a high quality flow solution around the particulates
(subject as always to adequate spatial resolution) but
avoiding the prohibitive cost of re-meshing that makes
simulating these systems with Finite Element Methods so
expensive. Such direct coupling of SPH to DEM for high
integrity fluid-particulate modelling is now not far from
being a reality for large scale industrial flows.
87
9.7 New applications
Two highly prospective application areas where SPH
appears to have significant potential are:
• Biomedical problems, including biomedical
devices, blood flow, heart modelling (with complex
heart muscle interaction with the flow of a
non-Newtonian fluid), tissue engineering, bioreactors,
joints, cartilage degradation, shock wave and impact
on human physiology and many more. These difficult
but important applications have strong requirements
for complex free surface motion, fully coupled motion
of different objects with different rheologies and
potentially different governing equations and the
ability to easily track history.
• Turbomachinery, gears, rotating machinery.
Conventional CFD in using meshes or grids is highly
constrained in the problems that can be solved if
the boundary geometry performs non-trivial motion.
There are important special cases such as mixing tanks
where a slip mesh can be used so that an inner mesh
is attached to a central impeller and an outer mesh is
attached to the tank, but in general this is not possible.
The motion does not need to be particularly complex
in order to make simulation difficult to impossible with
a mesh based method. The simulation of the ingot
casting application (Prakash et al., 2005a) was
performed using SPH predominantly because
conventional methods can not handle a combination
of one set of objects translating, with one rotating
and another being stationary. Similarly, the flow of
plasma in a lobe pump was simulated by SPH because
of the ease of simulating the movement of the twin
impellers (Prakash et al., 2003). The general area of
turbomachinery is large and diverse and has
applications in the biotech, environmental and chemical
industries. SPH has strong advantages in simulating
these types of systems.
10 Conclusions
SPH being a Lagrangian meshless method has several
advantages over traditional grid or mesh based CFD
methods:
• Free surfaces are handled easily and naturally.
The particles move to new locations and the shape
of the free surface is just the surface of the particles
wherever they happen to be. There is no need for any
form of explicit surface tracking such as the
Volume of Fluid (VOF) method which is required for
grid based methods. This provides an easy and
highly accurate representation of fluid surface
behaviour, including wave propagation, wave breaking,
splashing and fragmentation. These occur without
introducing numerical diffusion at the free surface
88 P.W. Cleary, M. Prakash, J. Ha, N. Stokes and C. Scott
and without a loss of mass. Small fragments
of the fluid retain their mass and momentum on
ballistic trajectories. In addition, complex topological
changes in the surface can be easily tracked in
situations where VOF, level set and other surface
tracking methods for grid based techniques struggle, or
fail completely.
• As it is a Lagrangian method, it does not have the
non-linear convective term in the momentum equation.
Therefore SPH is very good at simulating momentum
dominated flows and avoids issues relating to the need
to use upwinding schemes.
• SPH is a fully transient method and so is suitable for
environmental flows that are not steady state.
• SPH can easily include complex additional physics
(e.g., solidification, freezing, non-Newtonian rheology,
solid stress, history dependence of fluid variables, oxide
formation, solute and sediment transport). This arises
partially from the flexibility of the continuum
modelling, partially from the fact that each element of
fluid or solid has a specific identity (i.e., the particle)
that stays with the material over time, (thereby
enormously simplifying the tracking of history
dependent quantities), and also from the ability to
impose specific rule bases on the particles that can
change the way in which the PDE and other governing
equations are used.
• Very complex geometries can be handled relatively
easily, eliminating the need to create complex volume
meshes in which to solve the fluid flow, as is needed
for grid and mesh based methods. This is particularly
important for large scale transient free surface flows
where the volumes of space that would need to be
meshed would be significantly larger than the volume
of fluid that is of interest.
These advantages make SPH very well suited to solving a
range of economically important industrial flow problems
and also problems in geophysics and civil and coastal
engineering. These advantages are not universal and it is
important to keep in mind that conventional grid/mesh
based CFD is able to solve many traditional industrial flow
problems more easily and more rapidly than can be done
using SPH. However, for flows ranging from die casting
and mould filling to digital content generation and from
milling of minerals to tsunamis and volcanoes and many
more, SPH offers predictive capability that is difficult to
match with conventional methods.
Acknowledgements
The support of CSIRO MMT and ODT Engineering are
gratefully acknowledged for the ingot casting modelling.
CSIRO and ODT Engineering are core participants in the
CRC for Cast Metals Manufacturing (CAST), which was
established under and is supported in part by the Australian
Government’s Cooperative Research Centres scheme.
The particulate-fluid mixing and the pyrometallurgy work
were conducted within the Light Metals Flagship,
a National Research Flagship initiated by CSIRO whose
support is gratefully acknowledged.
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