Smoothed particle hydrodynamics for numerical simulation of underwater explosion

Underwater explosion arising from high explosive detonation consists of a complicated sequence of energetic processes. It is generally very difficult to simulate underwater explosion phenomena by using traditional grid-based numerical methods due to the inherent features such as large deformations, large inhomogeneities, moving interface and so on. In this paper, a meshless, Lagrangian particle method, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is applied to simulate underwater explosion problems. As a free Lagrangian method, SPH can track the moving interface between the gas produced by the explosion and the surrounding water effectively. The meshless nature of SPH overcomes the difficulty resulted from large deformations. Some modifications are made in the SPH code to suit the needs of underwater explosion simulation in evolving the smoothing length, treating solid boundary and material interface. The work is mainly focused on the detonation of the high explosive, the interaction of the explosive gas with the surrounding water, and the propagation of the underwater shock. Comparisons of the numerical results for three examples with those from other sources are quite good. Major features of underwater explosion such as the magnitude and location of the underwater explosion shock can be well captured.