Addressing geometric and material nonlinearities in fluid-structure interaction with the ALE-SSM framework

Abstract

A novel methodology was introduced for integrating skeleton-based structural models (SSMs) with an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation to perform fluid–structure interaction (FSI) simulations (i.e., ALE-SSM). In ALE-SSM, the structural domain consists of force-based line elements, which are favored in modeling solid structures because of their computational efficiency. This paper enhances ALE-SSM to account for geometrically nonlinear and inelastic material responses of the structural domain. Geometric nonlinearity is introduced in two stages: (1) at the basic coordinate system of the force-based elements, where second-order effects stemming from the transverse element deformations are accounted for in the element flexibility matrix; and (2) at the global coordinate system, where a corotational formulation is used to perform the geometric transformation from the basic to the global coordinate system. The proposed approach for modeling geometric nonlinearity in ALE-SSM is evaluated with benchmark problems involving large deformations of beam structures positioned parallel and perpendicular to one-phase flows. Next, ALE-SSM is employed to define a new benchmark study that evaluates the effects of geometric and material nonlinearities in FSI simulations with force-based elements.