Enhanced coupling of solid body motion and fluid flow in finite volume framework

Abstract

An enhanced coupling strategy for the resolution of 6–degrees–of–freedom rigid body motion and unsteady incompressible fluid flow in Finite Volume collocated arrangement using PIMPLE algorithm and rigid mesh motion is presented in this paper. The improved coupling is achieved by calculating the 6–degrees–of–freedom motion equations after each pressure correction step in the pressure–velocity PISO (Pressure Implicit With Splitting of Operators) algorithm. Solving the 6–degrees–of–freedom equations after each solution of the pressure equation of the PISO loop accelerates the convergence, leading to smaller number of nonlinear pressure–velocity iterations needed per time–step. The novel approach is verified and validated on a heaving decay case, while the achieved acceleration in terms of the number of PISO loops is demonstrated on seakeeping simulations of a container ship.