SPH method applied to compression of solid materials for a variety of loading conditions

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is a numerical method that does not use a mesh or grid when solving a set of partial differential equations. This makes it particularly useful in application to solid mechanics problems where the sample undergoes large deformation. Whereas mesh-based methods have difficulty when the sample becomes severely distorted, SPH naturally deals with this important engineering scenario. We implement the SPH method for compressional deformation of solid samples and focus on uniaxial, biaxial and triaxial loading. We develop numerical procedures that naturally deal with these three different sets of boundary conditions and apply it to both small and larger strains in elastic and more complex materials. The method is shown to be robust up to large strains of 30%. Under uniaxial loading, a cylindrical sample tends to deform by bulging while under triaxial loading the cylindrical sample will remain cylindrical, but the diameter of the sample increases accordingly.