MPS-DEM coupling method for interaction between fluid and thin elastic structures

Abstract

In this present work, an in-house solver MPSDEM-SJTU is developed based on the improved Moving Particle Semi-implicit (MPS) method and Discrete Element Method (DEM). The MPS method is used to simulate the movement of the fluid while a more precise bond model, which includes the rolling contact model, is employed to analyse the dynamic responses of structures. Based on the boundary condition of MPS, a simple coupling scheme is proposed for the information exchange. The pressure carried by MPS particles is passed to the DEM particles. In turn, the velocity and displacement information will be transferred from the solid domain to the fluid domain. In order to improve the computation efficiency, the parallel technique is introduced to the solver. Besides, a Partition Technique (PT) is developed to avoid the misjudgment of the neighbor particles near the thin structures. The DEM-based structural solver is firstly validated for simulating an oscillating cantilever plate. Then, the coupling model is validated by comparison with benchmark tests, such as hydrostatic water column on an elastic plate, sloshing flows in a rolling tank with a thin elastic baffle, the flood discharge with an elastic gate and dam-break with an elastic plate. The numerical results show good agreement with experimental data and other numerical results. In addition, the developed solver is successfully extended to tackle FSI problems with fracture.