SPH-EBG simulation of oil spill containment by a flexible boom

Oil booms are commonly used to concentrate oil spilled in water and prevent oil from spreading to more expansive areas. The containment of an oil spill by a flexible boom involves complex problems such as the free surface flow, multiphase flow, and fluid-structure interaction. This paper presents a coupled numerical method of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and element bending group (EBG) to study oil spill containment by a flexible boom. The SPH method is used to simulate the oil-water two-phase flow and rigid floater of the boom, while the EBG method is used to model the flexible skirt of the boom. The particle shifting technique is adopted to improve the particle distribution. The SPH-EBG method was validated against experiments. Then, a series of numerical simulations was performed to study the mechanism of oil containment by a flexible boom and the effects of typical parameters such as the skirt length, counter weight, current velocity, and initial oil volume. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]