Smoothed particle hydrodynamics and its applications in fluid-structure interactions

In ocean engineering, the applications are usually related to a free surface which brings so many interesting physical phenomena (e.g. water waves, impacts, splashing jets, etc.). To model these complex free surface flows is a tough and challenging task for most computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers which work in the Eulerian framework. As a Lagrangian and meshless method, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) offers a convenient tracking for different complex boundaries and a straightforward satisfaction for different boundary conditions. Therefore SPH is robust in modeling complex hydrodynamic problems characterized by free surface boundaries, multiphase interfaces or material discontinuities. Along with the rapid development of the SPH theory, related numerical techniques and high-performance computing technologies, SPH has not only attracted much attention in the academic community, but also gradually gained wide applications in industrial circles. This paper is dedicated to a review of the recent developments of SPH method and its typical applications in fluid-structure interactions in ocean engineering. Different numerical techniques for improving numerical accuracy, satisfying different boundary conditions, improving computational efficiency, suppressing pressure fluctuations and preventing the tensile instability, etc., are introduced. In the numerical results, various typical fluid-structure interaction problems or multiphase problems in ocean engineering are described, modeled and validated. The prospective developments of SPH in ocean engineering are also discussed.