New smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) formulation for modeling heat conduction with solidification and melting

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) formulation for modeling heat conduction with phase change, offering a computationally efficient and accurate method for simulating solidification and melting processes.

Contribution

A novel SPH method for phase change heat transfer that is faster and easier to implement than existing finite element-based approaches.

Findings

The new SPH method is accurate across various tests.

It is computationally less expensive than previous methods.

The approach is robust for different phase change scenarios.

Abstract

When modelling phase change, the latent heat released (absorbed) during solidification (melting) must be included in the heat transfer equation. In this paper, different SPH methods for the implementation of latent heat, in the context of transient heat conduction, are derived and tested. First, SPH discretizations of two finite element methods are presented, but these prove to be computationally expensive. Then, by starting from a simple approximation and enhancing accuracy using different numerical treatments, a new SPH method is introduced, that is fast and easy to implement. An evaluation of this new method on various analytical and numerical results confirms its accuracy and robustness.