Smoothed Particle Methods and Their Applicability to Tribology

An in-house solver was created to simulate contact mechanics and hydrodynamic lubrication using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), SPH is a meshfree, particle-based method that can be used to solve continuum problems in solid and fluid mechanics. In this approach, the problem domain is represented by particles that move according to prescribed governing equations. Because smoothed particle methods have been shown to have the advantage of being able to model large deformations without concern of degradation in numerical accuracy, they have received recent interest for application to complex problems in tribology—the exploration of which is the focus of this study.