Fluid-Structure Interaction of a Radial Turbine

Abstract

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) plays a very important role in many industrial applications as diverse as aerospace, automotive, biomedical, civil and nuclear engineering. In the coupling between fluid and structure, the deforming structure modifies the boundary conditions for the fluid due to the motion of the fluid boundary. At the same time, the fluid flow causes varying loading conditions on the structure. Though efficient solvers for both the fluid and the structural dynamics exist, the development of tools for modelling various fluid-structure interaction problems remains a challenge. In order to describe FSI problems, an exchange of data has to take place between the fluid and structural fields. Based on this data exchanged, the methods for solving fluid-structure interaction problems can be divided into monolithic and partitioned couplings. For example, we can mention the researcher of Bobovnika et al. (2005). In this paper, the authors are interested to couple a finite-volume model to a finiteelement model of the straight-tube Coriolis flowmeter. Michler et al. (2004) have developed a monolithic approach to fluid-structure interaction. Piperno and Farhat (2001) are interested to partitioned procedures for the transient solution of coupled aeroelastic problems. Sternel et al. (2008) are developed an efficiency and accuracy of fluid-structure interaction simulations using an implicit partitioned approach. Van Brummelen et al. (2003) are studied the energy conservation under incompatibility for fluid-structure interaction problems. The monolithic coupling consists of solving both parts of fluid and structure in the same system of equations. The choice of time step is only limited by the required precision. However, this type of algorithm requires a development of a computer code. Moreover, the numerical methods employed for the fluid and the structure domains are different and are difficult to place within the same code, hence the utility of the partitioned algorithm methodology. In this method, the fluid and structural parts are resolved separately. This method has been introduced by Park and Felippa (1983), and further investigated by Wood (1990). Problems dealing with FSI involve the coupling of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Computational Structure Dynamics (CSD) codes. Various numerical simulations study the fluid behaviour, when the movement of