A generalized three-dimensional hybrid contact method for smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Abstract: When the effects of relative motion at the solid object interfaces are not negligible, the contact method is required in the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method to prevent virtual shear and tensile stresses. However, there is still a lack of a three-dimensional (3D) contact method that can be well applied to various deformation situations, especially for extreme deformation. In this study, we propose a generalized 3D hybrid contact method for SPH. First, an improved high accuracy free-surface particle detection method is developed, including optimization of the detection process to reduce the detection time and consideration of the effect of material compressibility on the filtering parameters to extend the existing semi-geometric method from the incompressible (weakly-compressible) field to the compressible field. Then, a novel 3D local surface reconstruction method is developed based on the free-surface particles and region growing method, including the selection of the initial edge, the principle of triangle expansion, and the evaluation function, followed by the surface-surface contact detection and enforcement of normal penalty and tangential friction forces according to the penalty function method and Coulomb friction law. Finally, the particle-particle contact method is added to deal with cases where surface-surface contact fails, e.g., some particles are unable to reconstruct the local surface when the material undergoes extreme deformations. The proposed method is validated by several numerical tests, and the results show that the proposed method is capable of handling various contact problems with accuracy and stability, including small, large, and extreme deformation problems.