A variable speed of sound formulation for weakly compressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Abstract: We present a Weakly Compressible SPH (WCSPH) formulation with a temporally variable speed of sound. The benefits of a time-varying sound speed formulation and the weaknesses of a constant sound speed formulation are worked out. It is shown how a variable sound speed can improve the performance, accuracy, and applicability of the WCSPH method. In our novel Uniform Compressible SPH (UCSPH) method, the required artificial speed of sound is calculated at each time step based on the current flow field. The method's robustness, performance, and accuracy are demonstrated with three test cases: a Taylor-Green vortex flow, a falling droplet impact, and a dam break. For all showcases, we observe at least similar accuracy as computed with WCSPH at strongly improved computational performance.