Smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Abstract

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is a unique numerical method widely used for astrophysical problems since it involves no spatial grid. Rather, fluid quantities are carried by a set of Lagrangian `particles' which move with the flow, meaning that complicated dynamics and asymmetric phenomena are treated with ease. Since adaptivity is a built-in feature of the method there is no need to resort to complicated additional mesh refinement procedures. In this chapter we have undertaken a thorough review of the SPH method in order to develop a sufficiently accurate method which can be applied to MHD problems (Chapters 4-5). The review contains several results which have not been published elsewhere.