A high-order solver for simulating vortex-induced vibrations using the sliding-mesh spectral difference method and hybrid grids

We present a high-order solver for simulating vortex-induced vibrations (VIVs) at very challenging situations, for example, VIVs of a row of very closely placed objects with large relative displacements. This solver works on unstructured hybrid grids by employing the high-order tensor-product spectral difference method for quadrilateral grids and the Raviart-Thomas spectral difference method for triangular grids. To deal with the challenging situations where a traditional conforming moving mesh is incapable, we split a computational domain into nonoverlapping subdomains, where each interior subdomain encloses an object and moves freely with respect to its neighbors. A nonuniform sliding-mesh method that ensures high-order accuracy is developed to deal with sliding interfaces between subdomains. A monolithic approach is adopted to seamlessly couple the fluid and solid vibration equations. Moreover, the solver is parallelized to further improve its efficiency on distributed-memory computers. Through a series of numerical tests, we demonstrate that this solver is high-order accurate for both inviscid and viscous flows and has good parallel efficiency, making it ideal for VIV studies.