A systematic approach for constructing higher-order immersed boundary and ghost fluid methods for fluid–structure interaction problems

A systematic approach is presented for constructing higher-order immersed boundary and ghost fluid methods for CFD in general, and fluid–structure interaction problems in particular. Such methods are gaining popularity because they simplify a number of computational issues. These range from gridding the fluid domain, to designing and implementing Eulerian-based algorithms for challenging fluid–structure applications characterized by large structural motions and deformations or topological changes. However, because they typically operate on non body-fitted grids, immersed boundary and ghost fluid methods also complicate other issues such as the treatment of wall boundary conditions in general, and fluid–structure transmission conditions in particular. These methods also tend to be at best first-order space-accurate at the immersed interfaces. In some cases, they are also provably inconsistent at these locations. A methodology is presented in this paper for addressing this issue. It is developed for inviscid flows and prescribed structural motions. For the sake of clarity, but without any loss of generality, this methodology is described in one and two dimensions. However, its extensions to flow-induced structural motions and three dimensions are straightforward. The proposed methodology leads to a departure from the current practice of populating ghost fluid values independently from the chosen spatial discretization scheme. Instead, it accounts for the pattern and properties of a preferred higher-order discretization scheme, and attributes ghost values as to preserve the formal order of spatial accuracy of this scheme. It is illustrated in this paper by its application to various finite difference and finite volume methods. Its impact is also demonstrated by one- and two-dimensional numerical experiments that confirm its theoretically proven ability to preserve higher-order spatial accuracy, including in the vicinity of the immersed interfaces.     

An implicit immersed boundary method for three-dimensional fluid–membrane interactions

We present an implicit immersed boundary method for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations capable of handling three-dimensional membrane–fluid flow interactions. The goal of our approach is to greatly improve the time step by using the Jacobian-free Newton–Krylov method (JFNK) to advance the location of the elastic membrane implicitly. The most attractive feature of this Jacobian-free approach is Newton-like nonlinear convergence without the cost of forming and storing the true Jacobian. The Generalized Minimal Residual method (GMRES), which is a widely used Krylov-subspace iterative method, is used to update the search direction required for each Newton iteration. Each GMRES iteration only requires the action of the Jacobian in the form of matrix–vector products and therefore avoids the need of forming and storing the Jacobian matrix explicitly. Once the location of the boundary is obtained, the elastic forces acting at the discrete nodes of the membrane are computed using a finite element model. We then use the immersed boundary method to calculate the hydrodynamic effects and fluid–structure interaction effects such as membrane deformation. The present scheme has been validated by several examples including an oscillatory membrane initially placed in a still fluid, capsule membranes in shear flows and large deformation of red blood cells subjected to stretching force.     

A differentially interpolated direct forcing immersed boundary method for predicting incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in time-varying complex geometries

A dispersion-relation-preserving dual-compact scheme developed in Cartesian grids is applied together with the immersed boundary method to solve the flow equations in irregular and time-varying domains. The artificial momentum forcing term applied at certain points in cells containing fluid and solid allows an imposition of velocity condition to account for the motion of solid body. We develop in this study a differential-based interpolation scheme which can be easily extended to three-dimensional simulation. The results simulated from the proposed immersed boundary method agree well with other numerical and experimental results for the chosen benchmark problems. The accuracy and fidelity of the IB flow solver developed to predict flows with irregular boundaries are therefore demonstrated.     

An improved penalty immersed boundary method for fluid–flexible body interaction

An improved penalty immersed boundary (pIB) method has been proposed for simulation of fluid–flexible body interaction problems. In the proposed method, the fluid motion is defined on the Eulerian domain, while the solid motion is described by the Lagrangian variables. To account for the interaction, the flexible body is assumed to be composed of two parts: massive material points and massless material points, which are assumed to be linked closely by a stiff spring with damping. The massive material points are subjected to the elastic force of solid deformation but do not interact with the fluid directly, while the massless material points interact with the fluid by moving with the local fluid velocity. The flow solver and the solid solver are coupled in this framework and are developed separately by different methods. The fractional step method is adopted to solve the incompressible fluid motion on a staggered Cartesian grid, while the finite element method is developed to simulate the solid motion using an unstructured triangular mesh. The interaction force is just the restoring force of the stiff spring with damping, and is spread from the Lagrangian coordinates to the Eulerian grids by a smoothed approximation of the Dirac delta function. In the numerical simulations, we first validate the solid solver by using a vibrating circular ring in vacuum, and a second-order spatial accuracy is observed. Then both two- and three-dimensional simulations of fluid–flexible body interaction are carried out, including a circular disk in a linear shear flow, an elastic circular disk moving through a constricted channel, a spherical capsule in a linear shear flow, and a windsock in a uniform flow. The spatial accuracy is shown to be between first-order and second-order for both the fluid velocities and the solid positions. Comparisons between the numerical results and the theoretical solutions are also presented.     

An efficient high-order boundary element method for nonlinear wave–wave and wave-body interactions

A highly efficient high-order boundary element method is developed for the numerical simulation of nonlinear wave–wave and wave-body interactions in the context of potential flow. The method is based on the framework of the quadratic boundary element method (QBEM) for the boundary integral equation and uses the pre-corrected fast Fourier transform (PFFT) algorithm to accelerate the evaluation of far-field influences of source and/or normal dipole distributions on boundary elements. The resulting PFFT–QBEM reduces the computational effort of solving the associated boundary-value problem from O(N^2～3) (with the traditional QBEM) to O(N ln N) where N represents the total number of boundary unknowns. Significantly, it allows for reliable computations of nonlinear hydrodynamics useful in ship design and marine applications, which are forbidden with the traditional methods on the presently available computing platforms. The formulation and numerical issues in the development and implementation of the PFFT–QBEM are described in detail. The characteristics of accuracy and efficiency of the PFFT–QBEM for various boundary-value problems are studied and compared to those of the existing accelerated (lower- and higher-order) boundary element methods. To illustrate the usefulness of the PFFT–QBEM, it is applied to solve the initial boundary-value problem in the generation of three-dimensional nonlinear waves by a moving ship hull. The predicted wave profile and resistance on the ship are compared to available experimental measurements with satisfactory agreements.     

Numerically stable fluid–structure interactions between compressible flow and solid structures

We propose a novel method to implicitly two-way couple Eulerian compressible flow to volumetric Lagrangian solids. The method works for both deformable and rigid solids and for arbitrary equations of state. The method exploits the formulation of [11] which solves compressible fluid in a semi-implicit manner, solving for the advection part explicitly and then correcting the intermediate state to time tⁿ⁺¹ using an implicit pressure, obtained by solving a modified Poisson system. Similar to previous fluid–structure interaction methods, we apply pressure forces to the solid and enforce a velocity boundary condition on the fluid in order to satisfy a no-slip constraint. Unlike previous methods, however, we apply these coupled interactions implicitly by adding the constraint to the pressure system and combining it with any implicit solid forces in order to obtain a strongly coupled, symmetric indefinite system (similar to [17], which only handles incompressible flow). We also show that, under a few reasonable assumptions, this system can be made symmetric positive-definite by following the methodology of [16]. Because our method handles the fluid–structure interactions implicitly, we avoid introducing any new time step restrictions and obtain stable results even for high density-to-mass ratios, where explicit methods struggle or fail. We exactly conserve momentum and kinetic energy (thermal fluid–structure interactions are not considered) at the fluid–structure interface, and hence naturally handle highly non-linear phenomenon such as shocks, contacts and rarefactions.     

A novel pressure–velocity formulation and solution method for fluid–structure interaction problems

In the standard approach for simulating fluid–structure interaction problems the solution of the set of equations for solids provides the three displacement components while the solution of equations for fluids provides the three velocity components and pressure. In the present paper a novel reformulation of the elastodynamic equations for Hookean solids is proposed so that they contain the same unknowns as the Navier–Stokes equations, namely velocities and pressure. A separate equation for pressure correction is derived from the constitutive equation of the solid material. The system of equations for both media is discretised using the same method (finite volume on collocated grids) and the same iterative technique (SIMPLE algorithm) is employed for the pressure–velocity coupling. With this approach, the continuity of the velocity field at the interface is automatically satisfied. A special pressure correction procedure that enforces the compatibility of stresses at the interface is also developed. The new method is employed for the prediction of pressure wave propagation in an elastic tube. Computations were carried out with different meshes and time steps and compared with available analytic solutions as well as with numerical results obtained using the Flügge equations that describe the deformation of thin shells. For all cases examined the method showed very good performance.     

The immersed boundary method for advection–electrodiffusion with implicit timestepping and local mesh refinement

We describe an immersed boundary method for problems of fluid–solute-structure interaction. The numerical scheme employs linearly implicit timestepping, allowing for the stable use of timesteps that are substantially larger than those permitted by an explicit method, and local mesh refinement, making it feasible to resolve the steep gradients associated with the space charge layers as well as the chemical potential, which is used in our formulation to control the permeability of the membrane to the (possibly charged) solute. Low Reynolds number fluid dynamics are described by the time-dependent incompressible Stokes equations, which are solved by a cell-centered approximate projection method. The dynamics of the chemical species are governed by the advection–electrodiffusion equations, and our semi-implicit treatment of these equations results in a linear system which we solve by GMRES preconditioned via a fast adaptive composite-grid (FAC) solver. Numerical examples demonstrate the capabilities of this methodology, as well as its convergence properties.     

An efficient preconditioner for monolithically-coupled large-displacement fluid–structure interaction problems with pseudo-solid mesh updates

We present a block preconditioner for the efficient solution of the linear systems that arise when employing Newton’s method to solve monolithically-coupled large-displacement fluid–structure interaction problems in which the update of the moving fluid mesh is performed by the equations of large-displacement elasticity. Following a theoretical analysis of the preconditioner, we propose an efficient implementation that yields a solver with near-optimal computational cost, in the sense that the time for the solution of the linear systems scales approximately linearly with the number of unknowns. We evaluate the performance of the preconditioner in selected two- and three-dimensional test problems.     

Hydrodynamic boundary conditions: An emergent behavior of fluid–solid interactions

By using the Onsager principle of minimum energy dissipation, the hydrodynamic boundary conditions at the fluid–solid interface are shown to be the natural emergent behavior of microscopic interactions that lead to the interfacial tension and the tangential friction at the fluid–solid interface [T. Qian, C. Qiu, P. Sheng, J. Fluid Mech. 611 (2008) 333]. This is satisfying because the equations of motion, e.g., the Stokes equation, and the hydrodynamic boundary conditions can now be derived from a unified framework. The resulting continuum hydrodynamic formulation yields predictions for immiscible two-phase flows that are in quantitative agreement with molecular dynamic simulations. In particular, the classical problem of the moving contact line is resolved. We also show results on the moving contact line over chemically patterned surfaces which exhibit striking nanoscale characteristics as well as sub-quadratic dependence of the moving contact line dissipation on its average velocity.     

An efficient fluid–solid coupling algorithm for single-phase flows

We present a simple and efficient fluid–solid coupling method in two and three spatial dimensions. In particular, we consider the numerical approximation of the Navier–Stokes equations on irregular domains and propose a novel approach for solving the Hodge projection step on arbitrary shaped domains. This method is straightforward to implement and leads to a symmetric positive definite linear system for both the projection step and for the implicit treatment of the viscosity. We demonstrate the accuracy of our method in the L¹$L^1$ and L^∞$L^{\infty }$ norms and present its removing the errors associated with the conventional rasterization-type discretizations. We apply this method to the simulation of a flow past a cylinder in two spatial dimensions and show that our method can reproduce the known stable and unstable regimes as well as correct lift and drag forces. We also apply this method to the simulation of a flow past a sphere in three spatial dimensions at low and moderate Reynolds number to reproduce the known steady axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric flow regimes. We further apply this algorithm to the coupling of flows with moving rigid bodies.     

A full Eulerian finite difference approach for solving fluid–structure coupling problems

A new simulation method for solving fluid–structure coupling problems has been developed. All the basic equations are numerically solved on a fixed Cartesian grid using a finite difference scheme. A volume-of-fluid formulation [Hirt, Nichols, J. Comput. Phys. 39 (1981) 201], which has been widely used for multiphase flow simulations, is applied to describing the multi-component geometry. The temporal change in the solid deformation is described in the Eulerian frame by updating a left Cauchy-Green deformation tensor, which is used to express constitutive equations for nonlinear Mooney–Rivlin materials. In this paper, various verifications and validations of the present full Eulerian method, which solves the fluid and solid motions on a fixed grid, are demonstrated, and the numerical accuracy involved in the fluid–structure coupling problems is examined.     

Wall effect on fluid–structure interactions of a tethered bluff body

Wind tunnel experiments have shown an unexplained amplification of the free motion of a tethered bluff body in a small wind tunnel relative to that in a large wind tunnel. The influence of wall proximity on fluid–structure interaction is explored using a compound pendulum motion in the plane orthogonal to a steady freestream with a doublet model for aerodynamic forces. Wall proximity amplifies a purely symmetric single degree of freedom oscillation with the addition of an out-of-phase force. The success of this simple level of simulation enables progress to develop metrics for unsteady wall interference in dynamic testing of tethered bluff bodies.     

A direct-forcing embedded-boundary method with adaptive mesh refinement for fluid–structure interaction problems

In the present work we developed a structured adaptive mesh refinement (S-AMR) strategy for fluid–structure interaction problems in laminar and turbulent incompressible flows. The computational grid consists of a number of nested grid blocks at different refinement levels. The coarsest grid blocks always cover the entire computational domain, and local refinement is achieved by the bisection of selected blocks in every coordinate direction. The grid topology and data-structure is managed using the Paramesh toolkit. The filtered Navier–Stokes equations for incompressible flow are advanced in time using an explicit second-order projection scheme, where all spatial derivatives are approximated using second-order central differences on a staggered grid. For transitional and turbulent flow regimes the large-eddy simulation (LES) approach is used, where special attention is paid on the discontinuities introduced by the local refinement. For all the fluid–structure interaction problems reported in this study the complete set of equations governing the dynamics of the flow and the structure are simultaneously advanced in time using a predictor–corrector strategy. An embedded-boundary method is utilized to enforce the boundary conditions on a complex moving body which is not aligned with the grid lines. Several examples of increasing complexity are given to demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of the proposed formulation.     

A matrix-free,implicit, incompressible fractional-step algorithm for fluid–structure interaction applications

In this paper we detail a fast, fully-coupled, partitioned fluid–structure interaction (FSI) scheme. For the incompressible fluid, new fractional-step algorithms are proposed which make possible the fully implicit, but matrix-free, parallel solution of the entire coupled fluid–solid system. These algorithms include artificial compressibility pressure-poisson solution in conjunction with upwind velocity stabilisation, as well as simplified pressure stabilisation for improved computational efficiency. A dual-timestepping approach is proposed where a Jacobi method is employed for the momentum equations while the pressures are concurrently solved via a matrix-free preconditioned GMRES methodology. This enables efficient sub-iteration level coupling between the fluid and solid domains. Parallelisation is effected for distributed-memory systems. The accuracy and efficiency of the developed technology is evaluated by application to benchmark problems from the literature. The new schemes are shown to be efficient and robust, with the developed preconditioned GMRES solver furnishing speed-ups ranging between 50 and 80.     

An efficient multi-scale Poisson solver for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with immersed boundaries

The iterative-multi-scale-finite-volume (IMSFV) procedure is applied as an efficient solver for the pressure Poisson equation arising in numerical methods for the simulation of incompressible flows with the immersed-interface method (IIM). Motivated by the requirements of the specific IIM implementation, a modified version of the IMSFV algorithm is presented to allow the solution of problems, in which the varying coefficient of the elliptic equation (e.g. the permeability of the medium in the context of the simulation of flows in porous media) varies over several orders of magnitude or even becomes zero within the integration domain. Furthermore, a strategy is proposed to incorporate the iterative procedure needed by the IIM to converge out constraints at immersed boundaries into the iterative IMSFV cycle. No significant deterioration of performance of the IMSFV method is observed with respect to cases, in which no iterative improvement of the boundary conditions is considered.     

A novel analytical model for intensity modulated and direct detected multiple-input–multiple-output system with time related zero forcing equalization over multimode fiber

In this paper, basing on tap delay lines filter model and model spatial coupling theory, we build up a novel analytical model for an intensity modulated and direct detected multiple-input–multiple-output (IM-DDMIMO) system over multimode fiber. At the receiver side, time related zero forcing (ZF) equalization was used to recover signals. With this model, we theoretically and by simulation analyzed a 2 × 2 multimode fiber MIMO system utilizing offset launching scheme. It's found that two received streams can be well recovered by equalization. Compared with traditional single-input–single-output (SISO) system, such 2 × 2MIMO system can provide at least 5 dB Bit error rate (BER) performance improvement.     

Stable loosely-coupled-type algorithm for fluid–structure interaction in blood flow

We introduce a novel loosely coupled-type algorithm for fluid–structure interaction between blood flow and thin vascular walls. This algorithm successfully deals with the difficulties associated with the “added mass effect”, which is known to be the cause of numerical instabilities in fluid–structure interaction problems involving fluid and structure of comparable densities. Our algorithm is based on a time-discretization via operator splitting which is applied, in a novel way, to separate the fluid sub-problem from the structure elastodynamics sub-problem. In contrast with traditional loosely-coupled schemes, no iterations are necessary between the fluid and structure sub-problems; this is due to the fact that our novel splitting strategy uses the “added mass effect” to stabilize rather than to destabilize the numerical algorithm. This stabilizing effect is obtained by employing the kinematic lateral boundary condition to establish a tight link between the velocities of the fluid and of the structure in each sub-problem. The stability of the scheme is discussed on a simplified benchmark problem and we use energy arguments to show that the proposed scheme is unconditionally stable. Due to the crucial role played by the kinematic lateral boundary condition, the proposed algorithm is named the “kinematically coupled scheme”.