Numerical simulation of landslide impulsive waves by incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics

An incompressible‐smoothed particle hydrodynamics (I‐SPH) formulation is presented to simulate impulsive waves generated by landslides. The governing equations, Navier–Stokes equations, are solved in a Lagrangian form using a two‐step fractional method. Landslides in this paper are simulated by a submerged mass sliding along an inclined plane. During sliding, both rigid and deformable landslides mass are considered. The present numerical method is examined for a rigid wedge sliding into water along an inclined plane. In addition solitary wave generated by a heavy box falling inside water, known as Scott Russell wave generator, which is an example for simulating falling rock avalanche into artificial and natural reservoirs, is simulated and compared with experimental results. The numerical model is also validated for gravel mass sliding along an inclined plane. The sliding mass approximately behaves like a non‐Newtonian fluid. A rheological model, implemented as a combination of the Bingham and the general Cross models, is utilized for simulation of the landslide behaviour. In order to match the experimental data with the computed wave profiles generated by deformable landslides, parameters of the rheological model are adjusted and the numerical model results effectively match the experimental results. The results prove the efficiency and applicability of the I‐SPH method for simulation of these kinds of complex free surface problems.