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Updated: May 13, 2026

An Analog Macroscopic Technique for Studying Molecular Hydrodynamic Processes in Dense Gases and Liquids
Published on: December 4, 2017
Smoothed-particle-hydrodynamics modeling of dissipation mechanisms in gravity waves
Andrea Colagrossi1, Antonio Souto-Iglesias, Matteo Antuono
1CNR-INSEAN, The Italian Ship Model Basin Via di Vallerano 139, 00128 Rome, Italy. andrea.colagrossi@cnr.it
Abstract:
The smoothed-particle-hydrodynamics (SPH) method has been used to study the evolution of free-surface Newtonian viscous flows specifically focusing on dissipation mechanisms in gravity waves. The numerical results have been compared with an analytical solution of the linearized Navier-Stokes equations for Reynolds numbers in the range 50-5000. We found that a correct choice of the number of neighboring particles is of fundamental importance in order to obtain convergence towards the analytical solution. This number has to increase with higher Reynolds numbers in order to prevent the onset of spurious vorticity inside the bulk of the fluid, leading to an unphysical overdamping of the wave amplitude. This generation of spurious vorticity strongly depends on the specific kernel function used in the SPH model.
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