Modified Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (MSPH) basis functions for meshless methods, and their application to axisymmetric Taylor impact test

The Modified Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (MSPH) method proposed earlier by the authors and applied to the analysis of transient two-dimensional (2-D) heat conduction, 1-D transient simple shearing deformations of a thermoviscoplastic material, 1-D wave propagation in a functionally graded plate, and 2-D elastodynamic crack propagation is extended to the analysis of axisymmetric deformations of a thermoviscoplastic material. In the MSPH method, different shape functions are used to find kernel estimates of the function, and of its first and second derivatives. It differs from the classical finite element method in which derivatives of a function are usually obtained by differentiating the shape function used to approximate the function. It is shown that results computed with the MSPH method for the Noh problem agree well with its analytical solution. The MSPH basis functions can be used in any meshless method to numerically solve either static or dynamic problems. The method is then applied to analyze transient deformations of a cylindrical rod impacting at normal incidence a rigid smooth stationary flat plate. The computed solution is found to agree very well with those obtained by analyzing axisymmetric and 3-D transient deformations of the rod with the commercial code LS-DYNA. The final length of the deformed rod, the final radius of the impacted face, and the final length of the relatively undeformed portion of the rod for twelve test configurations computed with the MSPH method are also found to agree well with their corresponding experimental values. Published by Elsevier Inc.