Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics
Abstract
Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is a unique numerical method widely used for astrophysical problems since it involves no spatial grid. Rather, fluid quantities are carried by a set of Lagrangian `particles' which move with the flow, meaning that complicated dynamics and asymmetric phenomena are treated with ease. Since adaptivity is a built-in feature of the method there is no need to resort to complicated additional mesh refinement procedures. In this chapter we have undertaken a thorough review of the SPH method in order to develop a sufficiently accurate method which can be applied to MHD problems (Chapters 4-5). The review contains several results which have not been published elsewhere.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0507472,
title = {Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics},
author = {Daniel Price},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0507472},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
This is chapter 3 of my PhD thesis entitled "Magnetic fields in Astrophysics", University of Cambridge, 2004. The other chapters have been published as papers but people have found this one useful. The full thesis (+a4paper version) is available at: http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/dprice but may vanish if I move jobs / die suddenly. Reformatted slightly for letter paper. 55 pages including bibliography, 19 figures