45. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics for Ductile Solid Continua

In this chapter, a numerical simulation model for ductile solid continua is presented. It is based on the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method, which serves to spatially discretize and, thus, solve the governing equations of continuum mechanics. Due to the meshless, Lagrangian character of the SPH spatial discretization technique, the introduced model is naturally well-suited for the simulation of continua featuring large deformations, major changes in topology, material failure including structure disintegration, and/or a large number of contacts with the environment occurring at the same time. For this reason, it has the potential to become a beneficial complement to the well-established numerical solid models, which mainly make use of mesh-based methods. To that end, however, the original SPH discretization scheme is to be variously extended and modified as discussed in detail in the course of this chapter. Besides, also its efficient implementation, i.e. the efficient numerical solution of the SPH-discretized governing equations of continuum mechanics, is addressed. The quality of the developed SPH formulation for ductile solids including its versatility and accuracy is demonstrated on the basis of two exemplary applications, namely, the industrial processes of friction stir welding and orthogonal metal cutting. It is shown as part of this contribution that, in either case, the proposed SPH model for ductile solid continua is capable of reproducing both the mechanical and the thermal macroscopic behavior of the real processed material in the simulation.