Joe Monaghan Prize
The Joe Monaghan Prize has been established to recognise SPH researchers who make outstanding advances in one or more SPHERIC Grand Challenges (convergence, numerical stability, boundary conditions, and adaptivity). The prize is named in honour of the unique contributions made by Prof. Joe Monaghan in the foundation of SPH and its continuous development since 1977.
The Joe Monaghan Prize was created in 2015 to recognize SPH researchers who have made outstanding advances in recent years on one or more of the SPHERIC Grand Challenges:
GC1. Convergence, consistency and stability
GC2. Boundary conditions
GC3. Adaptivity
GC4. Coupling with other methods
GC5. Industrial applicability
2025 (4th edition)
The 4th Joe Monaghan Prize was decided by a vote of delegates at the 19th SPHERIC World Conference in Barcelona. The winning paper was:
which contributed to Grand Challenge #1 “Convergence, consistency and stability”. The prize was organized by Benedict Rogers as an author of the previous winning paper. Benedict Rogers coordinated the open nomination process during the year prior to the conference and the Local Organising Committee conducted the voting process during the event.
Photo (from left to right): Corrado Altomare, Andrea Colagrossi, Peng-Nan Sun, Salvatore Marrone, Renato Vacondio
The prize was presented by the SPHERIC Chairman Renato Vacondio and the conference organisor Corrado Altomare to the authors Peng-Nan Sun, Andrea Colagrossi and Salvatore Marrone who were attending the world conference. For the 2025 edition nominations were sought in 2024 for articles published in the in the years 2016-2021 addressing one or more of the SPHERIC Grand Challenges. This process resulted in a shortlist of the following 12 eligible articles:
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Ganzenmüller, G. C., Sauer, M., May, M., & Hiermaier, S. (2016). Hourglass control for Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics removes tensile and rank-deficiency instabilities: Hourglass control for SPH. The European Physical Journal Special Topics, 225(2), 385-395. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2016-02631-x
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Cercos-Pita, J. L., Antuono, M., Colagrossi, A., & Souto-Iglesias, A. (2017). SPH energy conservation for fluid–solid interactions. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 317, 771-791. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2016.12.037
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Ghavamian, A., Lee, C. H., Gil, A. J., Bonet, J., Heuzé, T., & Stainier, L. (2021). An entropy-stable Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics algorithm for large strain thermo-elasticity. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 379, 113736. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2021.113736
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Sun, P. N., Colagrossi, A., Marrone, S., & Zhang, A. M. (2017). The δplus-SPH model: Simple procedures for a further improvement of the SPH scheme. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 315, 25-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2016.10.028
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Sun, P. N., Le Touzé, D., & Zhang, A. M. (2019). Study of a complex fluid-structure dam-breaking benchmark problem using a multi-phase SPH method with APR. Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements, 104, 240-258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enganabound.2019.03.033
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Sun, P. N., Colagrossi, A., Marrone, S., Antuono, M., & Zhang, A. M. (2019). A consistent approach to particle shifting in the δ-Plus-SPH model. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 348, 912-934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2019.01.045
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Sun, P. N., Colagrossi, A., Marrone, S., Antuono, M., & Zhang, A. M. (2018). Multi-resolution Delta-plus-SPH with tensile instability control: Towards high Reynolds number flows. Computer Physics Communications, 224, 63-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpc.2017.11.016
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Canelas, R. B., Brito, M., Feal, O. G., Domínguez, J. M., & Crespo, A. J. C. (2018). Extending DualSPHysics with a Differential Variational Inequality: modeling fluid-mechanism interaction. Applied Ocean Research, 76, 88-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apor.2018.04.015
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Fourtakas, G., & Rogers, B. D. (2016). Modelling multi-phase liquid-sediment scour and resuspension induced by rapid flows using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) accelerated with a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Advances in Water Resources, 92, 186-199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2016.04.009
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Khayyer, A., Gotoh, H., Falahaty, H., & Shimizu, Y. (2018). An enhanced ISPH–SPH coupled method for simulation of incompressible fluid–elastic structure interactions. Computer Physics Communications, 232, 139-164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpc.2018.05.012
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Di Mascio, A., Antuono, M., Colagrossi, A., & Marrone, S. (2017). Smoothed particle hydrodynamics method from a large eddy simulation perspective. Physics of Fluids, 29(3). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4978274
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Lind, S. J., & Stansby, P. (2016). High-order Eulerian incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics with transition to Lagrangian free-surface motion. Journal of Computational Physics, 326, 290-311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2016.08.047
2022 (3rd edition)
The 3rd Joe Monaghan Prize was decided by a vote of delegates at the 2022 Workshop in Catania. The winning paper was:
which contributed to Grand Challenge #1 “Convergence, consistency and stability”. The Prize was presented by the SPHERIC Chairman Renato Vacondio and the Prize supervisor Salvatore Marrone to the authors Steven Lind and Ben Rogers who were attending the workshop.
Photo (from left to right): Salvatore Marrone, Steven Lind, Renato Vacondio, Benedict Rogers
For the 2022 edition nominations were sought in 2021 for articles published in the period 2013-2018 addressing one or more of the SPHERIC Grand Challenges. This process resulted in a shortlist of the following 5 eligible articles:
1) Canelas, R. B., Brito, M., Feal, O. G., Domínguez, J. M., & Crespo, A. J. C. (2018). Extending DualSPHysics with a differential variational inequality: modeling fluid-mechanism interaction. Applied Ocean Research, 76, 88-97 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apor.2018.04.015
2) Ferrand, M., Laurence, D. R., Rogers, B. D., Violeau, D., & Kassiotis, C. (2013). Unified semi‐analytical wall boundary conditions for inviscid, laminar or turbulent flows in the meshless SPH method. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids, 71(4), 446-472 https://doi.org/10.1002/fld.3666
3) Franz, T., Wendland, H. (2018). Convergence of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Method for a Specific Barotropic Fluid Flow: Constructive Kernel Theory. SIAM Journal of Mathematical Analysis, 50(5), 4752-4784 https://doi.org/10.1137/17M1157696
4) Skillen, A., Lind, S., Stansby, P. K., & Rogers, B. D. (2013). Incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) with reduced temporal noise and generalised Fickian smoothing applied to body–water slam and efficient wave–body interaction. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 265, 163-173 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2013.05.017
5) Vacondio, R., Rogers, B. D., Stansby, P. K., Mignosa, P., & Feldman, J. (2013). Variable resolution for SPH: a dynamic particle coalescing and splitting scheme. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 256, 132-148
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2012.12.014
2018 (2nd edition)
The 2nd Joe Monghan Prize was decided by a vote of delegates at the 2018 Workshop. The Prize was presented by Prof. Monaghan to Salvatore Marrone, Matteo Antuono, Andrea Colagrossi, Giuseppina Colicchio, David Le Touzé, and Giorgio Graziani for their article on the delta-SPH model. Congratulations to all the authors on their major contribution to the development of SPH.
Photo (from left to right): Benedict Rogers, Matteo Antuono, David Le
Touzé, Salvatore Marrone, Joe Monaghan, Nathan Quinlan
Following a nomination process, the following papers have been shortlisted for the 2018 Monaghan Prize:
1) Marrone, S., Antuono, M., Colagrossi, A., Colicchio, G., Le Touzé, D., Graziani, G. (2011) δ-SPH model for simulating violent impact flows, Comput. Meth. Appl. Mech. Engrng. 200 1526-1542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2010.12.016
2) Lind, S.J., Xu, R., Stansby, P.K., Rogers, B.D. (2012) Incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics for free-surface flows: a generalised diffusion-based algorithm for stability and validations for impulsive flows and propagating waves, J. Comput. Phys. 231:1499-1523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2011.10.027
3) Adami, S., Hu, X.Y., Adams, N.A. (2012) A generalized wall boundary condition for smoothed particle hydrodynamics, J. Comput. Phys. 231:7057-7075. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2012.05.005
4) Dehnen, W., Aly, H. (2012) Improving convergence in smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations without pairing instability, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 425:1068–1082. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21439.x
5) Ferrand, M., Laurence, D. R. (2013) Rogers, B. D., Violeau, D., Kassiotis, C., Unified semi-analytical wall boundary conditions for inviscid, laminar or turbulent flows in the meshless SPH method, Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 71:446-472. https://doi.org/10.1002/fld.3666
6) Violeau, D., Leroy, A. (2014) On the maximum time step in weakly compressible SPH, J. Comput. Phys 256:388-415. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2013.09.001
2015 (1st edition)
The 2015 inaugural Joe Monaghan Prize was presented to Andrea Colagrossi, Matteo Antuono, and David Le Touzé for their article "Theoretical considerations on the free-surface role in the smoothed-particle-hydrodynamics model" published in Physical Review E 79, 056701 (2009). The nominators of this article wrote that "Generally, free-surface boundary conditions are said to be “intrinsically” satisfied in SPH, but previously, there were no rigorous justifications for this statement. This article explains why the anti-symmetrized divergence is consistent when approaching the free surface, and unveils very important issues of pairs of divergence and gradient formulations regarding their consistency, conservation properties in modelling free surface boundary conditions." The Prize was decided by a vote of attendees at the 10th SPHERIC Workshop in Parma, Italy, in June 2015, and announced by Prof. Joe Monaghan.
Photo: Joe Monaghan (left), Andrea Colagrossi (right)
In total, six eligible articles were shortlisted for the Prize. Each one of them present significant advances in one or more of the SPHERIC Grand Challenges (convergence, numerical stability, boundary conditions, and adaptivity). The other shortlisted articles were:
1) Dehnen, W., Aly, H. (2012) Improving convergence in smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations without pairing instability, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 425:1068-1082 doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21439.x | open-access version
2) Fatehi, R., Manzari, M.T. (2011) Error estimation in smoothed particle hydrodynamics and a new scheme for second derivatives, Computers & Mathematics with Applications 61:482-498 doi:10.1016/j.camwa.2010.11.028 | open-access version
3) Marongiu, J.-C., Leboeuf, F., Caro, J., Parkinson, E (2010) Free surface flows simulations in Pelton turbines using an hybrid SPH-ALE method, Journal of Hydraulic Research 48(Supp 1):40-49 doi:10.1080/00221686.2010.9641244 | open-access version
4) Marrone, S., Colagrossi, A., Le Touzé, D., Graziani, G. (2010) Fast free-surface detection and level-set function definition in SPH solvers, Journal of Computational Physics 229:3652-3663 doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2010.01.019 | open-access version
5) Xu, R., Stansby, P., Laurence, D. (2009) Accuracy and stability in incompressible SPH (ISPH) based on the projection method and a new approach, Journal of Computational Physics 228:6703-6725 doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2009.05.032