Pressure boundary conditions for computing incompressible flows with SPH

Abstract In Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) methods for fluid flow, incompressibility may be imposed by a projection method with an artificial homogeneous Neumann boundary condition for the pressure Poisson equation. This is often inconsistent with physical conditions at solid walls and inflow and outflow boundaries. For this reason open-boundary flows have rarely been computed using SPH. In this work, we demonstrate that the artificial pressure boundary condition produces a numerical boundary layer that compromises the solution near boundaries. We resolve this problem by utilizing a “rotational pressure-correction scheme” with a consistent pressure boundary condition that relates the normal pressure gradient to the local vorticity. We show that this scheme computes the pressure and velocity accurately near open boundaries and solid objects, and extends the scope of SPH simulation beyond the usual periodic boundary conditions.