Moving least squares reconstruction for sharp interface immersed boundary methods

We propose a new approach for reconstructing velocity boundary conditions in sharp-inerface immersed boundary (IB) methods based on the moving least squares (MLS) interpolation method. The MLS is employed to not only reconstruct velocity boundary conditions but also to calculate the pressure and velocity gradients in the vicinity of the immersed body, which are required in fluid structure interaction problems to obtain the force exerted by the fluid on the structure. To extend the method to arbitrarily complex geometries with nonconvex shaped boundaries, the visibility method is combined with the MLS method. The performance of the proposed curvilinear IB MLS (CURVIB-MLS) is demonstrated by systematic grid-refinement studies for two- and three-dimensional tests and compared with the standard CURVIB method employing standard wall-normal interpolation for reconstructing boundary conditions. The test problems are flow in a lid-driven cavity with a sphere, uniform flow over a sphere, flow on a NACA0018 airfoil at incidence, and vortex-induced vibration of an elastically-mounted cylinder. We show that the CURVIB-MLS formulation yields a method that is easier to implement in complex geometries and exhibits higher accuracy and rate of convergence relative to the standard CURVIB method. The MLS approach is also shown to dramatically improve the accuracy of calculating the pressure and viscous forces imparted by the flow on the body and improve the overall accuracy of FSI simulations. Finally, the CURVIB-MLS approach is able to qualitatively capture on relatively coarse grids important features of complex separated flows that the standard CURVIB method is able to capture only on finer grids.     

An immersed boundary finite difference method for LES of flow around bluff shapes

A three‐dimensional numerical model using large eddy simulation (LES) technique and incorporating the immersed boundary (IMB) concept has been developed to compute flow around bluff shapes. A fractional step finite differences method with rectilinear non‐uniform collocated grid is employed to solve the governing equations. Bluff shapes are treated in the IMB method by introducing artificial force terms into the momentum equations. Second‐order accurate interpolation schemes for all sorts of grid points adjacent to the immersed boundary have been developed to determine the velocities and pressure at these points. To enforce continuity, the methods of imposition of pressure boundary condition and addition of mass source/sink terms are tested. It has been found that imposing suitable pressure boundary condition (zero normal gradient) can effectively reproduce the correct pressure distribution and enforce mass conservation around a bluff shape. The present model has been verified and applied to simulate flow around bluff shapes: (1) a square cylinder and (2) the Tsing Ma suspension bridge deck section model. Complex flow phenomena such as flow separation and vortex shedding are reproduced and the drag coefficient, lift coefficient, and pressure coefficient are calculated and analyzed. Good agreement between the numerical results and the experimental data are obtained. The model is proven to be an efficient tool for flow simulation around bluff bodies in time varying flows. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards simulation of flapping wings using immersed boundary method

In this work the immersed boundary method is applied to simulate incompressible turbulent flows around stationary and moving objects. The goal is to demonstrate that the immersed boundary technique along with a large eddy simulation approach is capable of simulating the effect of the so‐called leading edge vortex (LEV), which can be found in flapping wing aerodynamics. A Lagrangian method is used to approximate the solutions in the freshly cleared cells that lay within solid objects at one time step and emerge into fluid domain at the next time step. Flow around a stationary cylinder at Re_D = 20, 40, and 3900 (based on cylinder diameter D) is first studied to validate the immersed boundary solver based on the finite volume scheme using a staggered grid. Then, a harmonically oscillating cylinder at Re_D = 10 000 is considered to test the solver after the Lagrangian method is implemented to interpolate the solution in the freshly cleared cells. Finally, this approach is used to study flows around a stationary flat‐plate at several angles of attack and fast pitching flat‐plate. The rapidly pitching plate creates a dynamic LEV that can be used to improve the efficiency of flapping wings of micro air vehicle and to determine the optimum flapping frequency. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two‐dimensional compact finite difference immersed boundary method

We present a compact finite differences method for the calculation of two‐dimensional viscous flows in biological fluid dynamics applications. This is achieved by using body‐forces that allow for the imposition of boundary conditions in an immersed moving boundary that does not coincide with the computational grid. The unsteady, incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are solved in a Cartesian staggered grid with fourth‐order Runge–Kutta temporal discretization and fourth‐order compact schemes for spatial discretization, used to achieve highly accurate calculations. Special attention is given to the interpolation schemes on the boundary of the immersed body. The accuracy of the immersed boundary solver is verified through grid convergence studies. Validation of the method is done by comparison with reference experimental results. In order to demonstrate the application of the method, 2D small insect hovering flight is calculated and compared with available experimental and computational results. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A diffuse-interface immersed boundary method for simulation of compressible viscous flows with stationary and moving boundaries

In this paper, a diffuse-interface immersed boundary method (IBM) is proposed for simulation of compressible viscous flows with stationary and moving boundaries. In the method, the solution of flow field and the implementation of boundary conditions are decoupled into two steps by applying the fractional step technique, ie, the predictor step and the corrector step. Firstly, in the predictor step, the intermediate flow field is resolved by a recently developed gas kinetic flux solver (GKFS) without consideration of the solid boundary. The GKFS is a finite volume approach that solves the Navier-Stokes equations for the flow variables at cell centers. In GKFS, the inviscid and viscous fluxes are evaluated as a single entity by reconstructing the local solution of continuous Boltzmann equation. Secondly, in the corrector step, the intermediate flow field is corrected by the present diffuse-interface IBM. During this process, the velocity field is firstly corrected by the implicit boundary condition–enforced IBM so that the no-slip boundary condition can be accurately satisfied. After that, the density correction is made by an iterative approach with the help of the continuity equation. Finally, the correction of the temperature field is made in the same way as that of the velocity field. Good agreements between the present simulations and the reference data in literature demonstrate the reliability of the proposed method.     

2‐D transmitral flows simulation by means of the immersed boundary method on unstructured grids

Interaction between computational fluid dynamics and clinical researches recently allowed a deeper understanding of the physiology of complex phenomena involving cardio‐vascular mechanisms. The aim of this paper is to develop a simplified numerical model based on the Immersed Boundary Method and to perform numerical simulations in order to study the cardiac diastolic phase during which the left ventricle is filled with blood flowing from the atrium throughout the mitral valve. As one of the diagnostic problems to be faced by clinicians is the lack of a univocal definition of the diastolic performance from the velocity measurements obtained by Eco–Doppler techniques, numerical simulations are supposed to provide an insight both into the physics of the diastole and into the interpretation of experimental data. An innovative application of the Immersed Boundary Method on unstructured grids is presented, fulfilling accuracy requirements related to the development of a thin boundary layer along the moving immersed boundary. It appears that this coupling between unstructured meshes and the Immersed Boundary Method is a promising technique when a wide range of spatial scales is involved together with a moving boundary. Numerical simulations are performed in a range of physiological parameters and a qualitative comparison with experimental data is presented, in order to demonstrate that, despite the simplified model, the main physiological characteristics of the diastole are well represented. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Jump-reduced immersed boundary method for compressible flow

The main challenge of the immersed boundary approach is the proper enforcement of boundary conditions on the body interface without any spurious oscillations, which are induced by the nongrid-conforming boundary configuration. In this study, a new sharp interface ghost-cell immersed boundary method (IBM) is proposed for obtaining solutions near the immersed boundary with a high order of accuracy. The main idea is “jump-reduction” instead of jump-correction across the boundary interface by combining the ghost-cell method with the flow reconstruction method. In the proposed IBM, the unknown values at the three points, that is, boundary points, ghost cell, and flow field reconstruction point are solved simultaneously using equations formulated by the moving least-squares interpolation method. It is a hybrid of ghost-cell and flow reconstruction methods, correlated with interface values, which result in a reduced jump-discontinuity. In addition, a discontinuity-distinguishing algorithm is introduced so that the low-order method is applied only to the discontinuous or non smooth region, while the current high-order method is applied elsewhere. Reduced jump-discontinuity of the proposed IBM has been verified in both subsonic and supersonic flow using fundamental benchmark problems. We observed that the reduced jump-discontinuity does not hamper the mass conservation and shows even better conservation property than conventional methods due to the nonoscillatory performance in smooth regions. The numerical results further confirm the ability of the proposed IBM to solve complex flow physics with high-order accuracy and improved stability.     

A three dimensional implicit immersed boundary method with application

Most algorithms of the immersed boundary method originated by Peskin are explicit when it comes to the computation of the elastic forces exerted by the immersed boundary to the fluid. A drawback of such an explicit approach is a severe restriction on the time step size for maintaining numerical stability. An implicit immersed boundary method in two dimensions using the lattice Boltzmann approach has been proposed. This paper reports an extension of the method to three dimensions and its application to simulation of a massive flexible sheet interacting with an incompressible viscous flow.     

High-order ghost-point immersed boundary method for viscous compressible flows based on summation-by-parts operators

A high-order immersed boundary method is devised for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations by employing high-order summation-by-parts difference operators. The immersed boundaries are treated as sharp interfaces by enforcing the solid wall boundary conditions via flow variables at ghost points. Two different interpolation schemes are tested to compute values at the ghost points and a hybrid treatment is used. The first method provides the bilinearly interpolated flow variables at the image points of the corresponding ghost points and the second method applies the boundary condition at the immersed boundary by using the weighted least squares method with high-order polynomials. The approach is verified and validated for compressible flow past a circular cylinder at moderate Reynolds numbers. The tonal sound generated by vortex shedding from a circular cylinder is also investigated. In order to demonstrate the capability of the solver to handle complex geometries in practical cases, flow in a cross-section of a human upper airway is simulated.     

基于反馈力浸入边界法模拟复杂动边界流动

浸入边界法是模拟流固耦合的重要数值方法之一。本文采用反馈力浸入边界方法,对旋转圆柱和水轮机活动导叶旋转摆动绕流后的动边界流场进行数值模拟。其中,固体边界采用一系列离散的点近似代替,流体为不可压缩牛顿流体,使用笛卡尔自适应加密网格,利用有限差分法进行求解。固体对流场的作用通过构造适宜的反馈力函数实现。本文首先通过旋转圆柱绕流的计算结果同实验结果进行对比,吻合较好,验证了该计算方法的可靠性。然后针对水电站水力过渡过程中水轮机活动导叶旋转摆动绕流后的动边界流场进行数值模拟,得到导叶动态绕流后的流场分布特性和涡结构的演化特性。     

An immersed boundary method for simulation of inviscid compressible flows

In this paper, an immersed boundary method for simulating inviscid compressible flows governed by Euler equations is presented. All the mesh points are classified as interior computed points, immersed boundary points (interior points closest to the solid boundary), and exterior points that are blanked out of computation. The flow variables at an immersed boundary point are determined via the approximate form of solution in the direction normal to the wall boundary. The normal velocity is evaluated by applying the no‐penetration boundary condition, and therefore, the influence of solid wall in the inviscid flow is taken into account. The pressure is computed with the local simplified momentum equation, and the density and the tangential velocity are evaluated by using the constant‐entropy relation and the constant‐total‐enthalpy relation, respectively. With a local coordinate system, the present method has been extended easily to the three‐dimensional case. The present work is the first endeavor to extend the idea of hybrid Cartesian/immersed boundary approach to compressible inviscid flows. The tedious task of handling multi‐valued points can be eliminated, and the overshoot resulting from the extrapolation for the evaluation of flow variables at exterior points can also be avoided. In order to validate the present method, inviscid compressible flows over fixed and moving bodies have been simulated. All the obtained numerical results show good agreement with available data in the literature. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An immersed boundary method for incompressible flows using volume of body function

A simple and effective immersed boundary method using volume of body (VOB) function is implemented on unstructured Cartesian meshes. The flow solver is a second‐order accurate implicit pressure‐correction method for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. The domain inside the immersed body is viewed as being occupied by the same fluid as outside with a prescribed divergence‐free velocity field. Under this view a fluid–body interface is similar to a fluid–fluid interface encountered in the volume of fluid (VOF) method for the two‐fluid flow problems. The body can thus be identified by the VOB function similar to the VOF function. In fluid–body interface cells the velocity is obtained by a volume‐averaged mixture of body and fluid velocities. The pressure inside the immersed body satisfies the same pressure Poisson equation as outside. To enhance stability and convergence, multigrid methods are developed to solve the difference equations for both pressure and velocity. Various steady and unsteady flows with stationary and moving bodies are computed to validate and to demonstrate the capability of the current method. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种投影浸入边界法的快速直接求解方法

根据投影浸入边界法分步投影求解的特点,同时针对压力泊松方程离散后的大型稀疏线性方程组是非奇异非对称的特点,结合开源函数库UMFPACK,在传递线性方程组的系数矩阵和右端向量时,采用函数库Eigen将系数矩阵的数据结构改写优化,大大降低了存储空间,实现对高维大型稀疏线性方程组的快速求解,同时求解保持良好的稳定性。本文首先利用一具有解析解的数值算例验证了求解泊松方程数值方法的准确性和网格依赖性,进而利用VC++编写投影浸入边界法的数值计算程序,以单圆柱绕流为基准数值算例,通过与其他文献和实验结果的对比,验证了投影浸入边界法数值计算结果的可靠性,并进一步分析了不同雷诺数下圆柱绕流的流场结构特征和尾涡结构的动态演化过程。     

Improvement of mass source/sink for an immersed boundary method

An improved immersed boundary method using a mass source/sink as well as momentum forcing is developed for simulating flows over or inside complex geometries. The present method is based on the Navier–Stokes solver adopting the fractional step method and a staggered Cartesian grid system. A more accurate formulation of the mass source/sink is derived by considering mass conservation of the virtual cells in the fluid crossed by the immersed boundary. Two flow problems (the decaying vortex problem and uniform flow past a circular cylinder) are used to validate the proposed formulation. The results indicate that the accuracy near the immersed boundary is improved by introducing the accurate mass source/sink. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Vortex‐in‐cell method combined with a boundary element method for incompressible viscous flow analysis

In this study, an immersed boundary vortex‐in‐cell (VIC) method for simulating the incompressible flow external to two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional bodies is presented. The vorticity transport equation, which is the governing equation of the VIC method, is represented in a Lagrangian form and solved by the vortex blob representation of the flow field. In the present scheme, the treatment of convection and diffusion is based on the classical fractional step algorithm. The rotational component of the velocity is obtained by solving Poisson's equation using an FFT method on a regular Cartesian grid, and the solenoidal component is determined from solving an integral equation using the panel method for the convection term, and the diffusion term is implemented by a particle strength exchange scheme. Both the no‐slip and no‐through flow conditions associated with the surface boundary condition are satisfied by diffusing vortex sheet and distributing singularities on the body, respectively. The present method is distinguished from other methods by the use of the panel method for the enforcement of the no‐through flow condition. The panel method completes making use of the immersed boundary nature inherent in the VIC method and can be also adopted for the calculation of the pressure field. The overall process is parallelized using message passing interface to manage the extensive computational load in the three‐dimensional flow simulations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Computation of incompressible flows with immersed bodies by a simple ghost cell method

The incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are solved by an implicit pressure correction method on Cartesian meshes with local refinement. A simple and stable ghost cell method is developed to treat the boundary condition for the immersed bodies in the flow field. Multigrid methods are developed for both velocity and pressure correction to enhance the stability and convergence of the solution process. It is shown that the spatial accuracy of the method is second order in L₂ norm for both velocity and pressure. Various steady and unsteady flows over a 2D circular cylinder and a 3D sphere are computed to validate the present method. The capability of the present method to treat a moving body is also demonstrated. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation of three‐dimensional flows over moving objects by an improved immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method

An improved immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method (IB–LBM) developed recently [28] was applied in this work to simulate three‐dimensional (3D) flows over moving objects. By enforcing the non‐slip boundary condition, the method could avoid any flow penetration to the wall. In the developed IB–LBM solver, the flow field is obtained on the non‐uniform mesh by the efficient LBM that is based on the second‐order one‐dimensional interpolation. As a consequence, its coefficients could be computed simply. By simulating flows over a stationary sphere and torus [28] accurately and efficiently, the proposed IB–LBM showed its ability to handle 3D flow problems with curved boundaries. In this paper, we further applied this method to simulate 3D flows around moving boundaries. As a first example, the flow over a rotating sphere was simulated. The obtained results agreed very well with the previous data in the literature. Then, simulation of flow over a rotating torus was conducted. The capability of the improved IB–LBM for solving 3D flows over moving objects with complex geometries was demonstrated via the simulations of fish swimming and dragonfly flight. The numerical results displayed quantitative and qualitative agreement with the date in the literature. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An immersed boundary/wall modeling method for RANS simulation of compressible turbulent flows

In this paper, an immersed boundary (IB) method is developed to simulate compressible turbulent flows governed by the Reynolds‐averaged Navier‐Stokes equations. The flow variables at the IB nodes (interior nodes in the immediate vicinity of the solid wall) are evaluated via linear interpolation in the normal direction to close the discrete form of the governing equations. An adaptive wall function and a 2‐layer wall model are introduced to reduce the near‐wall mesh density required by the high resolution of the turbulent boundary layers. The wall shear stress modified by the wall modeling technique and the no‐penetration condition are enforced to evaluate the velocity at an IB node. The pressure and temperature at an IB node are obtained via the local simplified momentum equation and the Crocco‐Busemann relation, respectively. The SST k ? ω and S‐A turbulence models are adopted in the framework of the present IB approach. For the Shear‐Stress Transport (SST) k ? ω model, analytical solutions in near‐wall region are utilized to enforce the boundary conditions of the turbulence equations and evaluate the turbulence variables at an IB node. For the S‐A model, the turbulence variable at an IB node is calculated by using the near‐wall profile of the eddy viscosity. In order to validate the present IB approach, numerical experiments for compressible turbulent flows over stationary and moving bodies have been performed. The predictions show good agreements with the referenced experimental data and numerical results.     

不可压粘性流体浸入边界直接力法及软件实现

浸入边界法通过在N-S方程中施加体积力模拟不可滑移固壁边界及动边界,避免生成复杂贴体网格及动网格,极大地节省了网格建模时间及动网格计算消耗。本文提出一种新型附加体积力简化计算方法,将简化附加体积力以源项形式嵌入动量方程迭代中,通过用户自定义函数对CFD软件FLUENT二次开发,实现了浸入边界法和通用流体力学求解器的耦合计算。通过静止圆柱和动圆柱绕流数值模拟进行了验证,并探讨了插值函数对计算精度的影响。研究表明,通过引入浸入边界模型,能够提高计算效率,并实现结构网格背景下复杂边界和动边界的高效建模。     

A new modification of the immersed‐boundary method for simulating flows with complex moving boundaries

In this paper, a new immersed‐boundary method for simulating flows over complex immersed, moving boundaries is presented. The flow is computed on a fixed Cartesian mesh and the solid boundaries are allowed to move freely through the mesh. The present method is based on a finite‐difference approach on a staggered mesh together with a fractional‐step method. It must be noted that the immersed boundary is generally not coincident with the position of the solution variables on the grid, therefore, an appropriate strategy is needed to construct a relationship between the curved boundary and the grid points nearby. Furthermore, a momentum forcing is added on the body boundaries and also inside the body to satisfy the no‐slip boundary condition. The immersed boundary is represented by a series of interfacial markers, and the markers are also used as Lagrangian forcing points. A linear interpolation is then used to scale the Lagrangian forcing from the interfacial markers to the corresponding grid points nearby. This treatment of the immersed‐boundary is used to simulate several problems, which have been validated with previous experimental results in the open literature, verifying the accuracy of the present method. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.