SPH Simulation of Acoustic Waves: Effects of Frequency, Sound Pressure, and Particle Spacing

Acoustic problems consisting of multiphase systems or with deformable boundaries are difficult to describe using mesh-based methods, while the meshfree, Lagrangian smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method can handle such complicated problems. In this paper, after solving linearized acoustic equations with the standard SPH theory, the feasibility of the SPH method in simulating sound propagation in the time domain is validated. The effects of sound frequency, maximum sound pressure amplitude, and particle spacing on numerical error and time cost are then subsequently discussed based on the sound propagation simulation. The discussion based on a limited range of frequency and sound pressure demonstrates that the rising of sound frequency increases simulation error, and the increase is nonlinear, whereas the rising sound pressure has limited effects on the error. In addition, decreasing the particle spacing reduces the numerical error, while simultaneously increasing the CPU time. The trend of both changes is close to linear on a logarithmic scale.