SMOOTHED PARTICLE HYDRODYNAMICS APPLIED TO THE SIMULATION OF LOW REYNOLDS NUMBER FLOWS

In this work we use the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics methodology (SPH) to simulate incompressible viscous flows of Newtonian fluids. The SPH is a meshfree Lagrangian method which simulates the flow like a set of moving fluid particles that interact one with others by hydrodynamics forces. The forces acting on each particle are evaluated using a spatial filtering process, taken over a certain region in the neighborhood of the particle which is defined by a smoothing length, h. The filter kernel function and the ratio of the mean spatial displacement of the particles, and the smoothing length, h, are both of central importance for the accuracy of this methodology. A study of the relative importance of this parameters and also of the boundary condition scheme and pressure constitutive model are performed in a context of low Reynolds numbers flow. The model is validated by comparison with analytical solution of the Stokes equations. Adicionalmente, simula-se o caso da cavidade para Re = 1 e Re = 100. Good agreement of the results of the simulations and the reference theoretical data was observed.