Strongly coupled dynamics of fluids and rigid-body systems with the immersed boundary projection method

Abstract

A strong coupling algorithm is presented for simulating the dynamic interactions between incompressible viscous flows and rigid-body systems in both two- and three-dimensional problems. In this work, the Navier–Stokes equations for incompressible flow are solved on a uniform Cartesian grid by the vorticity-based immersed boundary projection method of Colonius and Taira. Dynamical equations for arbitrary rigid-body systems are also developed. The proposed coupling method attempts to unify the treatment of constraints in the fluid and structure—the incompressibility of the fluid, the linkages in the rigid-body system, and the conditions at the interface—through the use of Lagrange multipliers. The resulting partitioned system of equations is solved with a simple relaxation scheme, based on an identification of virtual inertia from the fluid. The scheme achieves convergence in only 2 to 5 iterations per time step for a wide variety of mass ratios. The formulation requires that only a subset of the discrete fluid equations be solved in each iteration. Several two- and three-dimensional numerical tests are conducted to validate and demonstrate the method, including a falling cylinder, flapping of flexible wings, self-excited oscillations of a system of many linked plates in a free stream, and passive pivoting of a finite aspect ratio plate under the influence of gravity in a free stream. The results from the current method are compared with previous experimental and numerical results and good agreement is achieved.