Modeling and simulation of fluid-structure interaction using smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Abstract

Analyzing fluid–structure interactions (FSI) is crucial in many engineering applications from modeling of blood flow to design of aircrafts. FSI problems are normally simulated using grid based methods, which is complicated and challenging due to the difficulties in modeling large deformations. In this work, we present a numerical model developed for solving FSI problems using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), which is a meshless particle based Lagrangian method widely used for solving fluid mechanics and heat transfer problems. Being meshless method, the discretization of complex domains and treatment of large deformations becomes easier in SPH. It has an attractive feature that the interpolating nodes also function as material component by carrying properties of the material and move according to the internal and external interactions. SPH uses a smoothing kernel function to approximate the field variables and its derivatives at a node from its neighboring nodes. With this perspective, we developed a numerical model to simulate the flow through a square lattice of stationary cylinders. The developed model captured the fluid dynamics and the velocity contour and the streamlines plot obtained are in good agreement with available results in the literature. We believe that this model can be extended to investigate complex fluid–structure interaction problems involving moving and deformable structures.