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A comparative numerical study of pressure-Poisson-equation discretization

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 A comparative numerical study of
pressure-Poisson-equation discretization strategies
for SPH
Jan-Philipp Fürstenau, Bircan Avci, Peter Wriggers
Institut für Kontinuumsmechanik
Leibniz Universität Hannover
Hannover, Germany
fuerstenau@ikm.uni-hannover.de
Abstract—The common discretizations of the pressure Poisson
equation are presented and simulated to show the benefits and
weaknesses of every approach with regard to multi-phase flows
and boundaries. To test the schemes a boundary-less multi-phase
fluid box collision is performed as much as a single-phase lid
driven cavity flow test and a multi-phase hydrostatic pressure
test case.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Many technical fluid problems involve multi-fluid flows,
examples can be found, for instance, in naval or process
engineering, like the oil loss of a tanker or the gas-liquid flows
in pipes. For this reason the prediction of multi-phase flows
is a topic of constant interest.
Starting with a weakly-compressible approach within the
DualSPHysics framework by Crespo et al. [1] it was found that
for high density ratios the simulations can become sensitive
to distortions and the time step is strongly decreasing affected
by the density ratio. In a previous work [2] the approach
from Monaghan and Rafiee [3], who used a density dependent
repulsive force, was compared with the approach of Colagrossi
and Landrini [4] who also used a surface force affecting the
pressure and pressure force equations. Finally the third work
in the comparison was the weakly-compressible approach of
Hu and Adams [5] who are using a number density approach,
a changed pressure acceleration term and a tensor based
representation of the continuous surface force by Brackbill
et al. [6] which reproduces the surface tension without the use
of numerical parameters and became one of two most used
algorithms for surface tension. For a comparison see Szewc
et al. [7]. Based on the combined approaches of Monaghan
and Rafiee [3] (pressure acceleration, viscosity and continuity
equation) and Hu and Adams [5] (surface tension) a stable
algorithm for multi-phase flows could be made up but the
problem of strongly decreasing time steps with high density
ratios was still an issue.
After stepping over to the simulation approach of incom-
pressible SPH again many authors were found to simulate
multi-phase flows. While most authors were simulating low
density ratio problems like Tofighi and Yildiz [8], Aly et al.
[9] or Shao [10], some authors also simulated high density
ratio problems like Zainali et al. [11] and Rezavand et al.
[12]. It was conspicuous that despite of two authors (Hu and
Adams [13] and Ihmsen et al. [14]) every paper found for
the simulation of incompressible flows was using the (finite)
difference scheme where the Laplacian operator is replaced by
a first order operator. In their paper Ihmsen et al. [14] point
out that the use of a different scheme, where the Laplacian
operator is replaced by the divergence of the gradient, is
beneficial for the convergence speed of an iterative solver as
it finally has a larger influence radius between the particles.
A derivated version of the scheme was also used by Hu and
Adams [13].
In the work of Fatehi et al. [15] the two discretizations
were compared together with a thrid discretization, where the
Laplacian is directly evaluated with the kernel. They came to
the result, that the difference scheme and the scheme with
the second derivative are equally exact and stable while the
scheme used by Ihmsen et al. [14] suffers from oscillations.
In this work the three different discretization schemes are
evaluated to show their influence on the pressure field in the
context of multi-phase and boundary affected flows.
II. M ODEL D ETAILS
For the simulation of incompressible fluids the Navier-
Stokes momentum equation is solved
dv 1
= − ∇p + ν∇2 v + f , (1)
dt ρ
together with the continuity equation
0 = ∇ · v. (2)
For the simulation of incompressible fluids the projection
method according to Cummins and Rudman [16] has estab-
lished. According to this method the pressure accelerations
are separated from the rest of the accelerations resulting in
a fractal time step. But contrary to their work a simpler
time stepping method is used according to Lee et al. [17]
and Ihmsen et al. [14]. At first the intermediate velocity is
calculated as
v∗ = vt + a∗ ∆t, (3)
12th international SPHERIC workshop Ourense, Spain, June 13-15, 2017

where a∗ consists of all non-pressure accelerations according III. L INEAR E QUATION S YSTEMS
to the position rt and velocity vt . In this paper viscous flows In this section the different equations will be presented
are observed so the acceleration equals which are leading to the linear equation systems dicretizing
X 16mj νi νj vij · rij the left-hand side of (7). The interested reader may find an
a∗ = ν∇2 v + g = ∇i Wij + g. (4) evaluation of the equations from a more mathematical point
νi ρi + νj ρj |rij | h
j of view in Fatehi et al. [15]. For the solution of the unknown
pressures in (7) the system to be solved will have the form
The discretized form of the viscosity part is used by [3] and
was found to be good working for multi-phase flows. To get A · pt+∆t = b, (11)
the full time step the unknown pressure part has to be added where A, pt+∆t and b are the coefficient matrix, the unknown
on the intermediate velocity pressures and the source term (in our case the divergence from
the right-hand side of (7)).
1
vt+∆t = v∗ − ∇pt+∆t ∆t. (5) A. Finite Difference Scheme (FD)
ρ
The most commonly used way to discretize the PPE in SPH
To calculate the unknown pressures the continuity equation (2) is the the Finite Difference scheme introduced by Cummins
is taken into account which demands the divergence of vt+∆t and Rudman [16] (see i.e. Lee et al. [17] or Rezavand et al.
to be zero. [12]). Simultaneously the approach also established for the

1 t+∆t
 simulation of heat fluxes and viscosity because of its simplicity
t+∆t ∗
0=∇·v =∇·v −∇· ∇p ∆t (6) and stability. Differences can be found whether the density is
ρ
assumed to be constant over the whole domain. For a multi-
can then be reordered to form the pressure Poisson equation phase flow this is not valid thus the density gradient has to be
(PPE) for divergence free flows taken into account. Several discretization schemes have been
tested resulting into the one by Aly et al. [9] to be the most
∇ · v∗
 
1 t+∆t stable one for high density ratios:
∇· ∇p = . (7)
ρ ∆t  
∇p
 X  ρi + ρj  (pj − pi ) rij · ∇Wij
∇· =V  
r 2  + η 2 .
Different pressure conditions like the constant density con- ρ i j
ρi ρ j ij
dition according to Shao and Lo [18] or Ihmsen et al. [14] (12)
or combinations like introduced by Aly et al. [9] can be Outgoing from this equation the coefficient matrix has the
implemented easily affecting only the right-hand side of the diagonal components
equation. The possible equation systems discretizing the left- X  ρi + ρj  rij · ∇Wij
hand side will be discussed in section III. With the obtained Aii = −V r2  + η 2 ,
  (13)
j
ρi ρj ij
pressure from the PPE, vt+∆t can be calculated by adding
the pressure accelerations onto the intermediate velocity by and the off-diagonal components
 
using the momentum conserving symmetric formulation for ρi + ρj rij · ∇Wij
multi-phase flows from [3]: Aij = V r2  + η 2 ,
  (14)
ρi ρj ij

1 under the assumption that the volume of all particles is

vt+∆t =v∗ − ∇pt+∆t (8) constant and equal m ρi = V . This assumption is only valid
i
ρ
X mj for a constant and equal smoothing length for all particles.
∗
pt+∆t + pt+∆t


=v − j i ∇Wij ∆t. (9)
j
ρ ρ
i j B. Double Summation Scheme (DS)
The Double Summation scheme is more seldom used (see
The new velocity is then used to advance the particle positions i.e. Hu and Adams [13] or Ihmsen et al. [14]). The formulation
in time results directly from evaluating the divergence of the pressure
rt+∆t = rt + vt+∆t ∆t. (10) accelerations from (9) resulting in
   X  ∇p   !
∇p ∇p
This time stepping scheme is simpler than the commonly used ∇· =V − · ∇Wij
one by Cummins and Rudman [16] and can be less stable, ρ i j
ρ j ρ i
as it is a first order time stepping scheme. But in this time (15)
stepping scheme the equation system is completely evaluated X 
X pl + pj
in the old configuration at t and the accelerations are affecting =V 2 ∇Wjl (16)
the result linearly which is favorable for the analysis of the j
ρj
l
pressure behavior. Additionally, for the observed test cases no
!
X  pk + pi 
difference could be figured out between the first and the second − ∇Wik · ∇Wij (17)
ρi
order time stepping scheme, regarding the final results. k
12th international SPHERIC workshop Ourense, Spain, June 13-15, 2017

In their work Cummins and Rudman [16] use the Double C. Second Derivative Scheme (SD)
Summation approach to compare it with the Finite Difference The Second Derivate scheme is the least used method. Some
scheme and find the Finite Difference approach to be more viscosity and heat conduction approaches are based on this
stable. But in their observations they do not use the complete scheme like the one of Chaniotis et al. [19] but for the sake of
approach shown in (17) but a shortened version where only stability the Second Derivative of the kernel must not change
the pressure interactions between Particle i and its neighbors its sign or at least have its turning point closer to the center
h∇p/ρii are taken into account whereas the effect of the neigh- than the closest particle. With the chosen Wendland Kernel
boring particles and their neighbors h∇p/ρij was neglected. this can be achieved by taking the smoothing length below
Anyways Fatehi et al. [15] find the complete scheme to cause four times the particle spacing as the turning point for a 2h
oscillations from a mathematical point of view. As the pressure ranged kernel is to be found at 0.5h. Additionally the approach
gradient is directly evaluated within this scheme, the choice has to deal with the gradient of the density if the density
of it has a large effect on the equation system. In this work is not assumed to be constant. Fatehi proposes the following
the resulting diagonal components are formulation:
  
∇p 1
2  1
" # !
2
X 1 X 1 ∇· = ∇ p i − 2 h∇ρii · h∇pii . (23)
Aii = V − ∇Wik − ∇Wij ·∇Wij . (18) ρ ρ i ρ
j
ρi ρj i i
k
This variant of the density gradient part was tested and found
While for the off-diagonal components there are the contribu- not to be working in a stable way with high density ratios
tions of the neighbors of particle i (see section VII-C2). For this reason the additional term was
" # " #! replaced by the multi-phase part from Aly et al. [9] which is
2 1 X 1 X also used in 12:
Aij = V − ∇Wik + ∇Wjl · ∇Wij ,
ρi ρj    X  ρi + ρj 
k l ∇p
(19) ∇· =V (pj − pi ) ∇2 Wij . (24)
ρ i 2ρ i ρ j
and those of the neighbors neighbors j

X 1
! With this formulation the diagonal components can be calcu-
2 lated as
Ail = V ∇Wik · ∇Wjl , (20) X  ρi + ρj 
ρk
k Aii = −V ∇2 Wij (25)
j
2ρ i ρ j
where the [•]-arguments are precomputed in a loop over the
neighboring particles. Please note that the indices j and k were and the off-diagonal components as
exchanged for simplicity as they both denote the neighbors 
ρi + ρj

of particle i. Furthermore the inner and outer loop have to Aij = V ∇2 Wij . (26)
2ρi ρj
change places to fit the pressure inside the loop, which is
mathematically uncritcal. In contrast to the other approaches, IV. B OUNDARY T REATMENT
in the Double Summation scheme it is necessary to solve For the solution of the chosen incompressible SPH flow
the pressures of the boundary particles through an equation problems two types of boundary conditions have to be defined.
system that differs from the one of the fluid particles. This is The free surface and the solid boundary. For the representation
required as an equal treatment of boundary and fluid or the of the free surface the divergence
P of the particle distance is
extrapolation usually leads to erroneous results. For this reason calculated as ∇ · r = V j rij · ∇Wij . The same value is
the pressure Poisson equation also has to be evaluated at the calculated for a fictional particle in space filled with particles
boundary particles as in a Cartesian way. If the resulting value for a particle
   X  ∇p  undergoes a certain percentage of the fully filled kernel the
∇p
∇· =V · ∇Wbj , (21) particle is seen as a free surface particle (in this work 75 %
ρ b j
ρ j are chosen). This surface handling is derived from the shifting
algorithm of Mokos [20] also used in section V. For the
and the pressure gradient, which is equal to the pressure
representation of solid boundaries a particle based solution
accelerations, has also to include the boundary particles, which
was desired. Thus several lines of particles are placed with
is done here in the following way:
  prescribed velocity to represent the boundary. According to
∇p X pj + pi X pb + pi Shao [10] the first line of boundary particles, which is closest
=V ∇Wij +V ∇Wib . (22)
ρ i ρi ρi to the fluid, contributes to the PPE and gets its pressure
j b
calculated in the same way like the fluid particles. The rest of
Through the transposition of these terms several new terms are the boundary particles are so called dummy particles which are
generated to calculate the boundary pressure in a meaningful supposed to fill the kernel of the fluid particles. Their pressure
way. But as one can see in section VII-C this approach still is copied from their nearest neighboring boundary particle.
suffers from the discontinuity between fluid and boundary. For This representation was tested besides diverse other ones and
more details on the general approach see Ihmsen et al. [14]. seems to have the least artifacts as it computes its pressure
12th international SPHERIC workshop Ourense, Spain, June 13-15, 2017

in the same way like the fluid. Another tested approach was
the semi-analytical boundary condition from Ferrand et al.
[21] which extrapolates the pressure field at the boundary
particles, also taking the current velocity and the body forces
into account. This approach was derived for boundary particles
from the original one that was written for boundary elements. Fig. 1. Setup for the fluid box collision test case
In our case this boundary condition seemed to overestimate
the pressure under body forces and thus led to gaps between
fluid and boundary. Another approach tested was the one by A. Fluid Box Collision
Akinci et al. [22], where the boundary particles do not have
The first test to be performed is intended as boundary free
an own pressure but reflect the pressure of the fluid particles.
to test the fluid algorithm and the properties of the equation
To increase the pressure force the mass of the fluid particle is
systems for single and multi phase flows in a simple test case.
calculated depending on the inverse of the amount of boundary
As shown in Fig. 1 the test case consists of two fluid blocks
particles within its kernel radius. This approach seems to work
which have the same velocity in opposite directions leading to
good for dynamic flows but leads to an underestimation of the
an impact. The two blocks are created directly together. In the
pressure force in the hydrostatic test case. The last approach
simulated test case both blocks have a size of 0.5x0.5 m and
tested was the boundary integral method according to Macia et
move with 1 m/s. For the single-phase test ρ1 = ρ2 = 1000
al. [23] the boundary particles have their own pressure but are
kg/m3 and for the multi-phase test ρ2 = 1 kg/m3 .
represented over a boundary normal and a boundary surface
1) Single-Phase: To show the pressure and velocity be-
(or boundary particle distance) which replaces the mass and
havior for the single phase test case and for the comparison
turns the volume integral into a surface integral. In our cases
with the multi-phase behavior, the pressure and velocity plots
this approach reached mostly the same results like the used
at the first timestep (0.001 s) are plotted in Figs. 2 - 4.
approach of Shao and was not followed up.
For the graphs the values were taken from a horizontal line
of particles next to the center of the blocks. As it can be
V. S HIFTING easily seen, the resulting pressure field has an elliptical form.
Additionally one can see that the pressures of the Double
To maintain an isotropic particle spacing, which is needed
Summation scheme are looking distorted, but a smoothing
for the long-term stability of the equation system, a shifting
with the well known Shepard filter reveals that the pressure is
algorithm is applied to the fluid particles. In this work the
actually the same like of the Finite Difference Scheme (see
shifting algorithm according to Mokos [20] is applied, where
Fig. 3). Furthermore the resulting pressures of the Second
the divergence of the particle distance is calculated to account
Derivative scheme are about half as much as of the Finite
for the free surface where the shifting may not be applied
Difference scheme. However, changing the equation system
(see section IV. When the shifting is applied to a particle, the
to match the pressures leads to an erroneous behavior and
magnitude of the shifting vector depends on the velocity of
the stable results of the Finite Difference scheme and the
the particle. This prevents the oscillation of particles with low
Second Derivative scheme are similar (see section VII-C).
velocities and results in stronger shifting of particles which
With a look at the velocity plot in x-direction (Fig. 4), one
are moving fast. For more details see also Crespo et al. [1].
can see that only the Double Summation scheme results in
a smooth velocity plot while the Finite Difference scheme
VI. S MOOTHING only differs directly in the impact zone the Second Derivative
In the test case in section VII-C it was found that a scheme greatly underestimates the deceleration based on the
smoothing of the density over the kernel was not leading pressure. The explanation can be found in the formulation of
to stable pressure accelerations without further corrections or the Double Summation method where in 17 the divergence is
more complex pressure gradients than the used one from 9. calculated from the resulting velocities. This way the equation
For this reason a linear density smoothing is introduced with a system is not simply calculating the pressures depending on
variable smoothing distance independent from the smoothing a the Laplacian but directly evaluates the divergence of the
length where the smoothed density is calculated as velocity.
2) Multi-Phase: The results of the multi-phase box colli-
sion can be found in Figs. 5 - 6. While the pressure values
P
∗ j ρj |rij |
ρi = P . (27) for the Double Summation scheme exceed the plotable space
j |rij |
(−8.5 · 103 - 8 · 103 P a) the Shepard-filtered results show only
VII. S IMULATION R ESULTS a small deviation from the rest of the results. Looking at the
velocity plots, the Finite Difference and Double Summation
In the following section three types of test cases are per- scheme appear very similar while the Second Derivative
formed to show and compare the behavior of the different scheme underestimates the pressure deceleration also in this
discretizations of the pressure poisson equation. case. In Fig. 6 the velocities of the box collision and the
12th international SPHERIC workshop Ourense, Spain, June 13-15, 2017

600 1.2
500 FD FD
0.8

x-velocity [m/s]
DS (filtered) DS

pressure [Pa]
400 0.4
SD SD
300 0
200
-0.4
100
-0.8
Fig. 2. Upper half plots of the qualitative pressure field at the first time step 0
-1.2
for the single-phase fluid box collision (clockwise from top left): FD, DS, DS
0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25
(Shepard-filtered), SD
x-coordinate [m] x-coordinate [m]

350000 Fig. 5. Pressure (left) and velocity (right) plots for a line of particles near
300000 FD the midline for the multi-phase fluid box collision
DS
pressure [Pa]

250000
DS (filtered)
200000
SD
150000
100000
50000
0
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3
x-coordinate [m]

Fig. 3. Pressure plot of a horizontal line of particles near the midline for
the single-phase fluid box collision

particle distributions can be seen after 0.1 s. It can be seen that

all three schemes are able to simulate this test case, while the
use of the shifting algorithm was not necessary. Caused by this Fig. 6. Velocity plots for the multi-phase fluid box collision after 0.1 s
the Finite Difference and the Second Derivative scheme show (clockwise from top left): FD, DS, SD
the characteristic stringing of the particles while this behavior
is much weaker for the Double Summation scheme.
granted by the scheme results in zero displacements paired
B. Lid Driven Cavity Flow with velocity oscillations throughout the whole simulation. To
get the particles into motion the scheme has to be weakened in
After the boundary free flow was investigated the driven
some way. In this work the smoothing of the pressure with the
cavity flow test is supposed to show the trustworthiness of the
Shepard filter was used for this. As one can see in the graph all
schemes in coherence with fixed and moving boundaries. For
three tested approaches are quiet close to the reference result
the long-term stability of the simulations the shifting algorithm
by Ghia et al. [24]. But with a look at the plots it is obvious,
had to be activated. The resulting plots can be seen in Fig. 7.
that the filtered Double Summation scheme overestimates the
At first it was found that the Double Summation scheme is
boundary pressure. This can be seen as a small gap between
not able to simulate the driven cavity, as the closed and fully
the fluid and the boundary all around the box and as a big
filled box in coherence with the exact conservation of volume,
gap in the upper left corner. Thus it is obvious that the filtered
Double Summation scheme is less capable of conserving the
1
volume than the other schemes.
0.8 FD
0.6 C. Fluid at Rest
x-velocity [m/s]

DS
0.4
0.2 SD The third test case is again a simple multi-phase test case
0 where two boxes of fluid (0.5x0.5 m) are placed above each
-0.2
-0.4 other affected by gravity (see Fig. 8). In a well working code
-0.6 the resulting pressure field follows the hydrostatic pressure
-0.8
-1 and the velocities should be close to zero while the volume
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 of the fluid is conserved. The setup and the pressure results
x-coordinate [m]
of the steady state after 0.09 s can be found in Fig. 8. In the
pressure plots, one can see that for the Double Summation
Fig. 4. Velocity plot of a horizontal line of particles near the midline for there are oscillations appearing, which are not decaying so
the single-phase fluid box collision that no steady state could be reached with this scheme. The
12th international SPHERIC workshop Ourense, Spain, June 13-15, 2017

1
analytical solution
FD
DS
0.8
SD
0.515

z-coordinate [m]
0.6 0.51

0.505
0.4
0.5

0.495
0.2 0 5 10
0.5

0.4
z-coordinate [m]

0
Ghia et al.
0.3 0 5000 10000
FD
DS (filtered) pressure [Pa]
0.2
SD Fig. 8. Setup for the fluid at rest test case (left); Pressure plots at the steady
0.1 state (but for DS) in comparison with the analytical solution ρgh (right)
0
0 5e-05 0.00015 1 1
FD FD
x-velocity [m/s] FD (smoothed) FD (smoothed)
0.8 0.8
SD SD
z-coordinate [m]

z-coordinate [m]
Fig. 7. Velocity plots of the steady state for the lid driven cavity flow SD (smoothed) SD (smoothed)
0.6 0.6
(clockwise from top left): FD, DS (Shepard-filtered), SD; Velocity plot of the 0.52
particles on a vertical line in comparison to the results of Ghia et al. [24]
0.4 0.5 0.4

general problem is resulting from the discontinuity of the PPE
at the boundary. The use of dummy particles (with or without
pressure), which is performed for both other schemes, leads
to a strong overestimation of the accelerations. Contrary to
this the use of only one line of particles results in an unstable
result and to an underestimation after several time steps. The
other boundary descriptions described in section IV also led
to an overestimation. The problem is, that even with the rather
complex equation system with all included boundary contri-
butions, the equation system shows a discontinuity between
fluid and boundary, resulting in high and oscillating pressures.
1) Density Smoothing: While the pressure plots are looking
trustworthy the velocity and in longer simulations the par-
ticle positions show a jump at the interface. This problem
is occurring also with the correct pressure results, which
makes it necessary to perform a correction on the resulting
pressure accelerations. Several tests have been performed to
test different pressure accelerations by replacing them i.e. with
the term from Hu and Adams [13], but this did not lead to a
much better result. Thus the linear smoothing of the density
from section VI was tested and found to be working quiet
well. The basic idea is to turn the jump of the density at
the interface into a linear transition. This changes the kink in
the pressure, which generates the velocity jump and thus the
instability, to a quadratic transition. Additionally, the smoothed
density can be used to calculate the pressure accelerations
which additionally reduces the velocity jump. It was found
that the smoothing range should be one particle distance more
0.48
0.2 0.2
0 10 20
0 0
0 1000 2000 3000 -0.009 -0.006 -0.003 0 0.003 0.006
pressure [Pa] z-velocity [m/s]
Fig. 9. Pressure (left) and velocity (right) plots for a vertical line of particles
near the midline for the multi-phase fluid at rest test case
than the kernel radius to get a stable simulation. The resulting
pressure and velocity plots can be found in Fig. 9. Together
with the plots of the particle positions after 1 s of simulation
time one can see that the Finite Difference and the Second
Derivative scheme fulfil the testcase rather good, but it is also
obvious that through the density smoothing the particles of
the different fluids start to mix. The use of the repulsive force
according to Monaghan and Rafiee [3] was not able to keep
the fluids separated. For higher smoothing ranges the velocity
jump is decreased even more but the effect on the simulation
also becomes stronger.
2) Second Derivative Density Gradient: To show the effect
of the density gradient on the pressure a plot of a vertical line
of particles is plotted in Fig. 11. It is obvious that the standard
representation of the Laplacian together with the density
gradient term leads to an erroneous pressure distribution as the
resulting pressures, for the smoothed as for the unsmoothed
density, are negative in the air phase.
VIII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper the three discretization schemes of the pressure
Poisson equation, appearing in the literature, were contem-
12th international SPHERIC workshop
Fig. 10. Configuration of the fluid at rest test case after 1 s simulation time
with the initial fluid height as a black bar, simulated with FD (left) and SD
(right)
1 ison of all three approaches was not possible.
Aly et al.
Aly et al. (smoothed)
density gradient
0.8
density gradient (smoothed)
0.52
z-coordinate [m]
0.6
0.5
0.4 0.48
0.2 -5 0 5
0 [3] J. Monaghan and A. Rafiee, “A simple sph algorithm for multi-fluid flow
-500 0 500 1000 1500
pressure [Pa]
Fig. 11. Comparison of the pressure plots for the Second Derivative scheme
solution and its variations for the multi-phase fluid at rest test case
plated with regard to multi-phase behavior and boundary han-
dling. In the first test case a boundary-less problem was calcu-
lated, showing that the Double Summation scheme reaches the
divergence free state throughout the whole simulation while
the Finite Difference and the Second Derivative scheme have a
jump in the velocities in the beginning of the simulation which
reduces during the simulation. Anyways, the overall results
after the 0.1 s were similar. The second test case was the lid
driven cavity flow which showed both the Finite Difference
and Second Derivative scheme to reach the same result while
the Double Summation scheme is not able to simulate the
combination of a closed, fully filled box as it totally conserves
the volume of the fluid. This leads to the particles being stuck
completely as they cannot move without compressing other
particles. The scheme was weakened by the use of the Shepard
filter onto the pressure to simulate the test case. This led to
a better result but there were compressions in the fluid near
the boundaries and especially in the corners. The third test
case was a quasi static multi-phase case under gravity which
should result in a steady hydrostatic pressure state. It was
shown that the Finite Difference and the Second Derivative
Ourense, Spain, June 13-15, 2017
scheme reach the hydrostatic result. For a long term stable
simulation a linear density smoothing was implemented and
showed an improvement of the pressure accelerations. Through
the smoothing of the density the velocities could be stabilized
but through the reduced density difference a mixing of the
fluids is generated which has to be stabilized in the future.
Finally it was found that the Finite Difference and the
Second Derivative scheme behave similar and are equally
stable while the Finite Difference scheme has less demands
on the kernel. This observation corresponds to those of Fatehi
et al. [15]. In contrast to this, the oscillations in the Double
Summation scheme, described in their work, are leading to a
stable velocity solution which could be shown in the boundary-
less case. Additionally the filtered pressure field is quite
similar to the resulting pressure fields of the other schemes.
Unfortunately no particle-based boundary representation could
be found leading to a stable result. Thus a complete compar-
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