Modeling Free-surface Solitary Waves with Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Abstract

A three-dimensional weakly compressible Smoothed ParticleHydrodynamics (SPH) solver is presented and applied tosimulate free-surface solitary waves generated in a quasi twodimensionaldam-break experiment. Test cases are constructedbased on the measurement layouts of a dam-break experiment.The simulated wave propagation speeds are compared to theexact solutions of the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation as afirst order theory, and to a second order iterative approximationinvestigated in the literature. Free surface shapes of differentsimulation cases are investigated as well. The results show goodagreement with the free surface shapes of the KdV equation aswell as with the second order approximation of solitary wavepropagation speeds.