On the development of a novel approach for simulating elastic beams in dualsphysics with the use of the project Chrono library

This work presents a novel numerical framework for dynamic analyses of structure systems within the meshless approach Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The Lagrangian solver DualSPHysics presents several advantages over the widely used Eulerian solvers, dealing with nonlinearities and multiphase phenomena with reasonable numerical stability and reliability. The proposed procedure exploits the mechanical features provided by the Project Chrono library to simulate elastic beams. The modelling procedure is of interest for studying complex soil-, solid-, fluid-structure interactions, involving a system that includes all of the aforementioned phases in a unitary context. The analytical formulation to pass information over to the SPH solver for generating a sub-assembly of rigid stubs and elastic hinges, that will mimic the behavior of a Euler-Bernoulli flexible beam, is presented. The approach is validated against theoretical Euler-Bernoulli solutions: the agreement between the theoretical solutions for the behavior of the flexible beams and the presented model is very good and increases when the number of elements that make up the beam, N, increases. In addition, the behavior of the flexible beam thus created in the SPH environment is validated considering a sensitivity analysis based on several parameters, such as the model resolution (initial interparticle distance) and the number of elements.