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.