This article is dedicated to providing a detailed review concerning the SPH-based hydrodynamic simulations for ocean energy devices (OEDs). Attention is particularly focused on three topics that are tightly related to the concerning field, covering (1) SPH-based numerical fluid tanks, (2) multi-physics SPH techniques towards simulating OEDs, and finally (3) computational efficiency and capacity. In addition, the striking challenges of the SPH method with respect to simulating OEDs are elaborated, and the future prospects of the SPH method for the concerning topics are also provided.

This paper aims at presenting a general-purpose-oriented and fully parallelized meshless framework to simulate complex Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) problems in ocean engineering. In this framework, a Weakly Compressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (WCSPH) solver is combined with several advanced pre- and post-processing techniques. Based on the framework, we have been developing our in-house WCSPH-FSI package named SPHydro for solving hydrodynamic problems involving complex FSI processes in an accurate, efficient, and convenient manner. Three benchmarks are performed to qualitatively and quantitatively validate the accuracy and convergence of SPHydro. In addition, several practical applications are also provided to further highlight the generality and applicability of SPHydro in ocean engineering simulations. It is demonstrated that SPHydro holds satisfactory performance in solving complex FSI problems in ocean engineering and that the present framework can be further developed to tackle more complex FSI problems for general engineering applications due to its high flexibility and extensibility.

Complex multiphase flow problems in ocean engineering have long been challenging topics. Problems such as large deformations at interfaces, multi-media interfaces, and multiple physical processes are difficult to simulate. Mesh-based algorithms could have limitations in dealing with multiphase interface capture and large interface deformations. On the contrary, the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method, as a Lagrangian meshless particle method, has some merit and flexibility in capturing multiphase interfaces and dealing with large boundary deformations. In recent years, with the improvement of SPH theory and numerical models, the SPH method has made significant advances and breakthroughs in terms of theoretical completeness and computational stability, which starts to be widely used in ocean engineering problems, including multiphase flows under atmospheric pressure, high-pressure multiphase flows, phase-change multiphase flows, granular multiphase flows and so on. In this paper, we review the progress of SPH theory and models in multiphase flow simulations, discussing the problems and challenges faced by the method, prospecting to future research works, and aiming to provide a reference for subsequent research.