Numerical Simulation of Low Reynolds Number Fluid-Structure Interaction with Immersed Boundary Method

Abstract

This article introduces a numerical scheme on the basis of semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations (SIMPLE) algorithm to simulate incompressible unsteady flows with fluid-structure interaction. The Navier-Stokes equation is discretized spatially with collocated finite volume method and Eulerian implicit method in time domain. The hybrid method that combines immersed boundary method (IBM) and volume of fluid (VOF) method is used to deal with rigid body motion in fluid domain. The details of movement of immersed boundary (IB) and calculation of VOF are also described. This method can be easily applied to any existing finite-volume-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver without complex operation, with which fluid flow interaction of arbitrarily complex geometry can be realized on a fixed mesh. The method is verified by low Reynolds number flows passing both stationary and oscillating cylinders. The drag and lift coefficients acquired by the study well accord with other published results, which indicate the reasonability of the proposed method.