Validation of a commercial fluid-structure interaction solver with applications to air cushion vehicle flexible seals

Abstract

Air cushion vehicle (ACV) flexible seals operate in a complex and chaotic environment dominated by fluid-structure interaction. An efficient means to explore relationships between interdependent governing parameters that affect performance is through high fidelity numerical simulation. As previous numerical efforts have employed separate iterative partitioned solvers, or have implemented simplified physics, the approaches have been complex, computationally expensive, or of limited utility. This research effort performs numerical simulations to verify and validate the commercial multi-physics tool STAR-CCM+ as a stand-alone partitioned approach for fluid-structure interaction problems upon a free surface. An implicit, incompressible finite volume fluid solver is fully-coupled to an implicit, nonlinear finite element structural solver to successfully replicate Turek-Hron benchmark results for an elastic beam in unsteady laminar flow. To validate the implementation as an ACV seal parameter exploratory tool, a planer bow seal model is developed and results are obtained for various cushion pressures and inflow speeds. Previous numerical and experimental results for deflection and resistance are compared, showing good agreement. A dimensional analysis is conducted to identify potential non-dimensional forms of parameters related to seal resistance. This work is a stepping stone for future researchers having interests in ACV seal design and other large deformation, fluid-structure interaction problems. By modeling all necessary physics within a single verified and validated computational desktop, a designer's ability to comprehensively investigate seal geometries and interactions has never been more promising.