Proceedings of the 1stAUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014

Numerical Simulations of Tsunami Surge Focusing Along the Valley Using

DualSPHysics

Muhammad Hafiz Aslami

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Tsunami Research Group, Universitas Gadjah mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Email: hafizaslami@gmail.com

Kuswandi*, Radianta Triatmadja **

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Tsunami Research Group, Universitas Gadjah mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
* Email: kuscoastal@yahoo.com
** Email: radiantatoo@yahoo.com

Abstract: The observations of the tsunami surge propagation along the V shape channel is one of the objectives of this
research. Physical modeling in laboratory have limitations to observe tsunami surges profiles because of high-speed flow.
Numerical modeling using SPH method is one of settlement to observe profiles of the tsunami surge. This simulation is using
DualSPHysics with Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) system. It provides higher speed of computation compare with
SPHysics that is using CPU system. The model of tsunami surge profiles is constructed with more than 9 million of particles,
including the fluid and boundary particles. The results of numerical simulations shows the similarity of water surface profiles
conducted in the laboratory. Small viscosity value in the input of numerical simulation produced differences of water surface
profile of tsunami surges at four different investigation points compared with the results obtained in the laboratory

Keywords: Tsunami surge, V shape valley, DualSPHysics.

1 BACKGROUND formulation of Monaghan (1992). The project was

Numerical simulation using computers or
computational simulation has increasingly become a
very important approach for solving complex practical
problems in engineering and science. Some
conventional numerical methods used widely to solve
engineering and science problems. It can be solved
with the help of a mesh using a Eulerian description or
can be solved without the use of mesh with
Lagrangian description. This work is focused on one
of meshfree method called Smoothed Particle
Hydrodynamics (SPH). It is used both in solid
mechanics and fluid dynamics. Meshfrree methods
allow to easily simulate problems with very complex
geometry, large deformation, and discontinuity of the
flow.
SPH was developed since seventies and firstly applied
to astrophysics and cosmology ([Gingold and
Monaghan, 1977], [Lucy, 1977]). The methods is
becoming increasingly popular in many engineering
fields, mostly the fluid dynamics. Since the collective
motion of the particles is similar to the movement of
the fluid so it can be modeled by the governing
equations of the classical Newtonian hydrodynamics.
SPHysics is an SPH method, which is based on
integral interpolants, and the code is inspired by the
developed in collaboration between several
researchers at the John Hopkins University (U.S.), the
University of Vigo (Spain), and the University of
Manchester (U.K.). The first version of SPHysics was
release on August 2007. It is open source that
available for public use and can be downloaded freely
from the website www.sphysics.org. A user’s manual
and several test case are provided. One of the purpose
of this project is to encourage other researcher to try
SPH and contribute to the SPHysics project by send
the code improvement back to the developers or report
any errors found in the code.
SPHysics proved provided an accurate result but it is
very expensive in term of computational runtimes, so
that it is unfeasible and very complicated to apply to
many engineering problems. The more number of
particles simulated, the more runtime is needed to
represent the system. For this reason, hardware
acceleration and parallel computing are required to
make SPHysics more useful and applicable in solving
engineering problems. In this work, the new
technology of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPUs) is
applied. By using a powerful parallel programming
model where the graphics card are used as execution
device, GPUs can be an alternative to reduce the
runtime needed significantly in simulation using SPH

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Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014 Proceedings of the 1stAUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster
method. This technology has been developed by the
video game industry and provides high performance.
By using GPUs technology, the new version of
SPHysics has been developed named DualSPHysics.
It is also open source and can be downloaded freely
from the website www.dual.sphysics.org. This new
SPHysics makes possible to simulate millions of
particles with reasonable computational cost. To run
the simulation using DualSPHysics, an Nvidia
CUDA-enabled GPU card must be installed on a
personal computer.
In the next sections, the numerical modeling result
using DualSPHysics and its validation by comparing
with experimental data are presented. The tsunami
surge-focusing valley interactions is studied and its
analysis presented using result visualization (instant
pictures) and charts.
2 SPH THEORY
The SPH formulation will explain in this section. By
understanding in detail all the concepts, strategies, and
essential formulations of SPH will be very helpful to
the development of further codes of DualSPHysics.
The main features of SPH method are also described
more detail in the following papers/books
([Monaghan, 1982]; [Monaghan, 1992]).
2.1 Integral Interpolants
The calculation in SPH method is based on integral
interpolant called kernel approximation. The
fundamental principle of approximation of any
function A(r) as Eq. (1) below.
A(r ) = ∫ A(r ' )W (r − r ' , h)dr ' (1)
Ω but the most commonly used kernel is the cubic-
where r is vector position; W is weighting function or
kernel function; and h is the smoothing length that
control the region of influence domain Ω ; The value
of h is typically must be higher than the initial
distance between particles.
Eq. (1) can be changed into discrete formulation as
Eq. (2) below, that is approximation of the function at
a particle a.
Ab
A(r ) = ∑ mb Wab (2)
b ρb
where mb and ρ b respectively are mass and density
of particles; and Wab = W (ra − rb , h) is the weighting
function or kernel function.
2
The derivative of a function in SPH is calculated
analytically, it is one of the advantages of SPH
methods. It is different with other methods, which is
the derivative is calculated using spacing between the
neighboring points. The derivative of this
interpolation can be obtained by ordinary
differentiation as Eq. (3).
Ab
∇A(r ) = ∑ mb ∇Wab (3)
b ρb
2.2 Kernel Function
The choice of the weighting function is very important
is SPH model, it affects the performance of an SPH
model. They should satisfy several conditions such as
positivity, compact support, and normalization.
Furthermore, the value of Wab must be
monotonically decreasing with increasing of the
distance between particle a and neighboring particles,
and tends to zero when the distance is equal to
smoothing length, h, as the delta function behavior.
Kernel function is depending in the value of
smoothing length, h, and the distance between
particles in non-dimensional form, q = r / h , where r
is the distance between particles a and b. The
parameter h control the size of the area around particle
a where contribution from the rest of particles are
considering to be calculated.
Generally, the precision of the SPH interpolation
increases with the order of the polynomial used on the
kernel function, but the computational time also
increases.
There is a wide variety of possible kernel functions,
spline:
 3 2 3 3 ; (0 ≤ q ≤ 1)
1 − 2 q + 4 q
 1
W (r , h ) = α D  (2 − q )3 ; (1 ≤ q ≤ 2) (4)
 4 ; (q ≥ 2 )
 0

( ) ( )
where α D is 10 7πh 2 in 2D and 1 πh 3 in 3D.
2.3 Momentum Equation
The momentum conservation equation in a continuum
field is:
Proceedings of the 1stAUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014


Dv 1    2.5 Equation of State and Compressibility
= − ∇P + g + Θ (5)
Dt ρ The fluid in the SPH formalism is treated as weakly
compressible, which facilitates the use of an equation
where v is velocity; P and ρ are pressure and density; of state to determine fluid pressure, which is much
 faster than solving an equation such as the Poissons
g = (0,0,−9.81)ms −1 is the gravitational acceleration; equation.

Θ refers to the diffusion terms.
Following Monaghan (1994) and Batchelor (1974),
The pressure gradient term in symmetrical form is the relationship between pressure and density is
expressed is SPH notation as assumed to follow the expression, known as Tait's
equation of state. It can be seen that a small oscillation
1   P P  in density may result in a large variation in pressure.
− ∇P = −∑ mb  a2 + b2 ∇ aWab (6)
ρ  ρa ρb   ρ γ

b

P = B   − 1 (10)
where P and ρ are pressure and density.  ρ 0  

By using the artificial viscosity proposed by The parameter B is a constant related to the bulk
Monaghan (1992), the momentum conservation
modulus of elasticity of the fluid; ρ 0 = 1000 Kg / m 3
equation in SPH can be written as
is the reference density, usually taken as the density of

 P  the fluid at the free surface, γ is the polytrophic
dva P 
= −∑ mb  a2 + b2 + Π ab ∇ aWab + g (7) constant, usually between 1 and 7, the minus one term
dt b  ρa ρb  in the equation of state is to obtain zero pressure at a
surface.
Π ab is the viscosity term:
This compressible fluid permits a speed of sound, c
 − α c ab µ ab  
 vab ⋅ rab < 0 ∂P Bγ
Π ab = ρ (8) c (ρ ) = = ρ γ −1 (11)

ab   dρ ρ0 γ

 0 vab ⋅ rab > 0

  ∂P Bγ
hvab ⋅ rab 
with µ ab =  2
     
; rab = ra − rb ; vab = va − vb ; rk c0 = c(ρ0 ) = = (12)
rab + η 2 dρ ρ = ρ0
ρ0

and vk are the position and the velocity corresponding
where c0 is the speed of sound at the reference
c + cb ρ + ρb
to particle k (a and b); cab = a ; ρ ab = a density (at the surface of the fluid); from Eq. (3.22)
2 2
the constant B is equal to B = c0 ρ 0 γ , it is a
2

; η = 0.01h ; α is a free parameter that can be

2 2
limitation of maximum change in the density.
changed according to each problem.
2.6 Time-step Algorithms
2.4 Continuity Equation
There are several ways to develop the solution of the
Changes in the fluid density are calculated in SPH equations in time. Probably, the Verlet algorithm
SPHysics using (Verlet, 1967) is the most commonly used time
integration scheme in molecular dynamics. Generally,
dρ a  
= ∑ mb v ab ∇ aWab (9) variables are calculated by following equations
dt b
n
dva
instead of using a weighted summation of mass van+1 = van−1 + 2∆t ; (13)
terms (Monaghan, 1992), since it is known to result dt
in an artificial density decrease near fluid interfaces.
dρ a
n
ρ an+1 = ρ an−1 + 2∆t ; (14)
dt

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Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014 Proceedings of the 1stAUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster

dr
n
dv
n boundary particle increases so that the pressure is
n +1
r = r + ∆t a + 0.5∆t 2 a
n
(15) increases. The force exerted on the fluid particle
( )
a a
dt dt
increases due to the pressure term P ρ 2 in the
Once every N time steps (N on the order of 50 time momentum equation creating a repulsive mechanism
steps), variables are calculated according to between fluid and boundary. More complete
description of this boundary condition is referred to
n
dva Crespo et al (2007).
van+1 = van + ∆t ; (16)
dt
3 EXPERIMENTAL SET UP
dρ a
n
The research is carried out using DualSPHysics code
ρ an+1 = ρ an + ∆t ; (17) (a set of C++ and CUDA files) which the
dt
implementation is based on SPHysics formulation. In
n n this numerical simulation by using DualSPHysics,
dra dv
ran+1 = ran + ∆t + 0.5∆t 2 a (18) there are some parameters that used: Cubic Spline for
dt dt kernel function, Verlet scheme for kernel correction,
Shepard filter for density filter, Artificial viscosity for
This is to stop the time integration diverging since the Viscosity treatments and others based on formulation
equations are no longer coupled. in source code for DualSPHysics.
The time-step control is dependent on the forcing The simulation is running on Graphics Processing
term, the Courant-Fredrich-Levy condition and the Units (GPUs) system with Nvidia CUDA-enabled
viscous diffusion term (Monagan, 1989). A variable GPU card (in this simulation, the computer used VGA
time step ∆t is calculated according to Monaghan and card Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti with processor
Kos, 1999). intel® Core™ i7-3820 CPU @3.6 GHz and memory
of RAM 16 GB).
∆t = C ⋅ min (∆t F , tCV ) ; (19)
For the simulation tsunami surge propagate into V
∆t F = min a ( h fa ; ) (20) shape valley needs more 9 million particles to
constructed fluids, flume and V shape model particles
h The experiment is carried out in Hydraulics and
∆t CV = min a (21)
hvab xab Hydrology Laboratory of The Center for Engineering
c s + max b 2 Science, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and using physical
rab model. A 24 m long flume of 1.45 m wide and 1.5 m
high was divided into two parts using a movable gate
Here ∆t F is the force per unit of mass f a and ∆tCV with quick release mechanism system. The gate can
controls the Courant condition and the viscosity of the be moved up quickly to generate surge to
system. C is a constant that can vary between 0.1 and downstream.
0.3 The V shape valley model was constructed using
plywood. The dimension of the V shape valley and the
2.7 Boundary Condition rectangular column is given in Figure 1.
The boundaries (walls, bottom, coastal structures,
wave makers, etc.) in SPH are described using a Wave height meters were installed along the V shape
discrete set of boundary particles that exert a repulsive valley model to measure the water fluctuation along
force on the fluid particles when they approach. There the valley during the simulation.
is one difference since the forces between particles do
not define the movement of the boundary particle:
they do not move (fixed boundary) or they will move
according to some kind of externally imposed
movement (gates, flaps, etc.).

Using repulsive boundary condition, when a fluid

particle approaches a boundary particle, and the
distance between them decreases become less than
smoothing length of kernel function, the density of the

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Proceedings of the 1stAUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014

Load = 330 kg

4
Wall = 600 cm

B = 145 cm
Water

Figure 1. Flume and model set-up

The surge heights were measured using a series of 5

wave probes at downstream of the gate at four stations
as shown in Figure 2.

wave wave wave 6.00

water probe 1 probe 2 probe 3 wave probe 4
(reservoir) 1.45
6.00

3.15
4.15
5.15
6.15

Figure 2. Experimental set-up 6

4 RESULT
Figure 3. Instants (respectively, t1=0.85 s; t2=1.05 s;
4.1 Simulation Result t3=1.25 s; t4=1.45 s; t5=1.70 s; t6=2.00 s) of the
tsunami surge simulation.

In Figure 3 (pict 1-5) are the screenshot of the

1 simulation visualization, respectively the time when
tsunami surge position was similar to wave probe 1- 4
in physical modeling and at the end of valley
positions. After impact, the surge tsunami is reflected
up and start falling down. When the tsunami surge
propagate into V shape valley, velocity of tsunami
surge near the wall is faster than center surge because
of the resultant of the velocity of original surge and
2 reflected surge.

4.2 Comparison between Numerical Simulation and

Experimental Data
The comparison can be seen at Figure 4. Respectively,
h3 and h0 are the tsunami surge depth and the initial
water depth in reservoir. SPH1 mean the point height
at wave prove 1 from SPH simulation result, and
3 EXP1 mean the point height at wave probe 1 from
physical modeling in laboratory.

The result of numeric simulation described the

similarity of tsunami surge profile in term of the surge
shape compared with experimental data, but velocity
at each investigation point are different because the
viscosity value is too small.

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4.1 Water Surface Profiles

Figure 5. described the water surface profiles of SPH
modeling for several time steps at the middle of flume
in Y-axis direction.

1.4

1.2

1 SPH1
SPH2
0.8
SPH3
h3/h0

SPH4
0.6
EXP1
0.4 EXP2
EXP3
0.2
EXP4

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Time (s)

Figure 4. Comparison between numerical simulation and experimental data

Figure 5. Water surface profiles

In figure 5. Point 0 to 8 on X-axis are the length of
water profile at reservoir before the gate opened. The
simulation for each time step describe changes of
water surface profiles in reservoir. At point on X-axis
8.1 to 16 are visualization of propagated surge profile
after gate open.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Numerical and physical modeling are the two main
Approaches to study phenomena in coastal
engineering, including tsunami. The result shows that
the SPH modeling with new technology called GPUs
system has become more feasible to simulate the fluid
dynamics. It has been proven to be an accurate model
and more efficient since it enables simulations of
several million particles (in that case more than 9
million particles) at a reasonable computational
runtime. For future improvement, the correct
parameter value, such as viscosity value, etc., of real
fluid must be studied.

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Proceedings of the 1stAUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference on Natural Disaster Yogyakarta, 22-23 January 2014

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research was funded by DPPM of the Directorate
General of Higher Education, Ministry of Education
and Culture on Indonesia through Hibah Kompetensi
2012. The authors would like to express their sincere
gratitude for the support. The support from the
Hydraulics and Hydrology laboratory of Research
Center for Engineering Science Universitas Gadjah
Mada is highly appreciated.

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Crespo, AJC., Gomez-Gesteira, M., Dalrymple, R. A.,

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