Numerical modelling can represent a useful and complementary tool to physical model tests. Sophisticated tools are now at a formative stage and here we are actively developing the novel, flexible numerical technique of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH).

As a meshless and Lagrangian technique, SPH is ideally suited to fluid and solid mechanics with highly nonlinear deformation and is opening new avenues of activity in several areas, notably fluid-structure interaction, multi-phase flows and importantly, engineering application and design. SPH describes a fluid by replacing its continuum properties with locally smoothed quantities at discrete Lagrangian locations. SPH has become increasingly popular in recent years as a novel technique to model violent hydrodynamics in wave breaking, wave-structure interaction, floating objects, etc.

The DualSPHysics code has been developed to use SPH for real engineering problems. DualSPHysics is open source and can be freely downloaded from the website www.dual.sphysics.org. The code can be proposed as a complementary tool to physical model experiments for the preliminary design of structures exposed to the action of violent flows.

The code comes with dedicated pre-processing software which can use a whole range of different input files for the geometries including CAD, STL, PLY files, etc., making setting up simulations straightforward. Advanced post-processing tools enable users to measure the physical magnitudes of any flow property at arbitrary locations in the domain.