Current Research | Renewable Energy

Numerical Simulations of Fluid-Structure Interaction Problems Based on Overset Grid Technique

By Guangyu Shi, Dr Qing Xiao

The project is to develop an overset-based partitioned Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) solver with applications to aero-elastic problems, such as flapping wing dynamics, wing flutter predictions and renewable energy devices.

The solver involves many different modules, e.g., flow solver, structural solver, mesh deformation solver, overset grid assembler and interfaces between fluid and solid. The fluid dynamics is resolved by solving the compressible unsteady Navier-Stokes equations with different turbulent models. In structural part, two different solvers are available, namely, modal analysis method and non-linear Euler-Bernoulli beam model. Both structural solvers are coupled with the flow solver in a partitioned framework. The Implicit Hole Cutting (IHC) method is used in present overset grid assembler, which is easier to implement and has more efficiency. The overset grid technique is also expected to alleviate the effort and complexity when generating meshes. Two options are provided to transfer data between fluid domain and solid domain, which are the inverse Boundary Element Method (BEM) and the Constant Volume Tetrahedron (CVT) method.

Present FSI solver has the capability to simulate many different FSI problems in engineering. For example, the prediction of wing flutter boundary in aeronautical engineering, the dynamics of flapping wings in biomimetic engineering and the Vortex Induced Vibrations (VIV) of long and flexible risers in offshore engineering.