Calculation of fluid–structure interaction: methods, refinements, applications

Abstract

This paper starts by reviewing the most significant previous studies on fluid–structure interaction of flows past stationary and moving circular cylinders, including those undergoing fluid dynamic excitation in the form of vortex-induced vibrations. It shows the importance of flow past a circular cylinder as a convenient validation test case for new numerical methods and demonstrates the advantages of the immersed boundary method. A new method based on the immersed boundary method to accurately compute fluid–structure interaction and vortex-induced vibrations is then presented and applied. The fluid solver is strongly coupled with the equation of motion through Hamming's fourth-order predictor–corrector method, which allows computation of the interaction of a fluid with a moving structure. The accuracy, validity and efficiency of the proposed method are demonstrated by a series of validation cases, including flow past stationary and moving cylinders, both prescribed and freely vibrating. The numerical method reproduces fairly well the vibration of an elastically mounted cylinder subjected to a fluid flow. In particular, vibration amplitude as well as vibration frequency are computed quite accurately. In addition, the predicted vortex-induced cylinder vibration lock-in regime is in good agreement with laboratory experiments.