Free surface flows simulations in Pelton turbines using an hybrid SPH-ALE method

An Arbitrary Lagrange Euler (ALE) description of fluid flows is used together with the meshless numerical method Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to simulate free surface flows. The ALE description leads to an hybrid method that can be closely connected to the finite volume approach. It is then possible to adapt some common techniques like upwind schemes and preconditioning to remedy some of the well known drawbacks of SPH like stability and accuracy. An efficient boundary treatment based on a proper upwinding of fluid information at the boundary surface is settled. The resulting SPH-ALE numerical method is applied to simulate free surface flows encountered in Pelton turbines.