Immersed Boundary Formulation Research Articles

Immersed Boundary Double Layer method: An introduction of methodology on the Helmholtz equation

The Immersed Boundary (IB) method of Peskin (1977) [1] is useful for problems that involve fluid-structure interactions or complex geometries. By making use of a regular Cartesian grid that is independent of the geometry, the IB framework yields a robust numerical scheme that can efficiently handle immersed deformable structures. Additionally, the IB method has been adapted to problems with prescribed motion and other PDEs with given boundary data. IB methods for these problems traditionally involve penalty forces which only approximately satisfy boundary conditions, or they are formulated as constraint problems. In the latter approach, one must find the unknown forces by solving an equation that corresponds to a poorly conditioned first-kind integral equation. This operation can therefore require a large number of iterations of a Krylov method, and since a time-dependent problem requires this solve at each step in time, this method can be prohibitively inefficient without preconditioning. This work introduces a new, well-conditioned IB formulation for boundary value problems, called the Immersed Boundary Double Layer (IBDL) method. In order to lay the groundwork for similar formulations of Stokes and Navier-Stokes equations, this paper focuses on the Poisson and Helmholtz equations to introduce the methodology and to demonstrate its efficiency over the original constraint method. In this double layer formulation, the equation for the unknown boundary distribution corresponds to a well-conditioned second-kind integral equation that can be solved efficiently with a small number of iterations of a Krylov method without preconditioning. Furthermore, the iteration count is independent of both the mesh size and spacing of the immersed boundary points. The method converges away from the boundary, and when combined with a local interpolation, it converges in the entire PDE domain. Additionally, while the original constraint method applies only to Dirichlet problems, the IBDL formulation can also be used for Neumann boundary conditions.

Immersed boundary simulations of fluid shear-induced deformation of a cantilever beam

A biofilm is a colony of microorganisms that adheres and grows on a surface typically in contact with a stagnant or flowing fluid environment. The hydrodynamic interaction between the fluid and the film structure plays a key role in the various phases of the biofilm life-cycle — formation, growth, detachment, and reestablishment. The fluid-flow conditions determine the shear stresses exerted upon the film structure causing it to deform up to a critical point, beyond which the biofilm is uprooted from the surface into a planktonic state in the flowing fluid. To develop a fundamental understanding of the effects of the fluid-flow parameters on the mechanics of the biofilm, this work considered an ideal 2D model scenario of ‘a rectangular cantilever beam immersed in a channel filled with viscous, incompressible fluid, where one end of the beam is fixed to the channel wall, bending in response to a shear flow.’ The Immersed boundary (IB) method was employed to simulate numerically the fluid–structure interaction. The effect of physical parameters of the problem — stiffness and height of the cantilever and flow velocity, along with the numerical parameters on the equilibrium structure of the elastic beam was investigated and the simulation results were qualitatively compared with respect to linear beam theory. A careful analysis of the “corner effects” — irregularities in beam shape near the free and fixed ends, has been presented. It was shown that this issue can be effectively eliminated by smoothing out the corners with a “fillet” or rounded shape. Finally, the IB formulation was extended to include porosity in the beam to investigate the effect of the resultant porous flow on the beam deflection.

The wake flow downstream of a propeller-rudder system

We report wall-resolved, large-eddy simulations for the case of a propeller operating upstream of a hydrofoil, mimicking a rudder. Our primary objective is the identification of wake features that are unique to this coupled system, when compared to open-water cases, which are usually the focus of experiments and computations in the literature. We were able to achieve unprecedented levels of numerical resolution, which capture the dynamics of all energetic eddies in the flow by using a scalable, conservative, structured solver in cylindrical coordinates. The boundary conditions on the rotating propeller and hydrofoil were enforced via an immersed boundary formulation. The largest values of turbulent stresses in the wake of the hydrofoil are achieved outwards from the radial coordinate of the tip of the propeller blades. This is due to spanwise gradients across the hydrofoil (in the direction parallel to the span of the hydrofoil), producing a displacement of the pressure side legs of the tip vortices towards outer coordinates, where they experience shear with the wake of the hydrofoil. The evolution of turbulence is non-monotonic across the streamwise direction. This is a consequence of the growing shear resulting from the complex interactions involving the shear layers from the trailing edge, the tip vortices and the two branches of the hub vortex coming from the two sides of the hydrofoil. Such a shear is reinforced by the spanwise velocities developed by the two branches of the propeller wake across the hydrofoil. Compared to an isolated propeller, these phenomena enhance turbulence production. The present results highlight that a downstream hydrofoil, typical of surface ships, is able to significantly intensify the wake signature of a propeller.

A target-fixed immersed-boundary formulation for rigid bodies interacting with fluid flow

We present an immersed boundary projection method for flow-structure interaction problems involving rigid bodies with complex geometries. Dynamics of a rigid body interacting with fluid flow and kinematics of other rigid bodies undergoing prescribed motions are coupled implicitly with the incompressible vorticity equations. In particular, the method is formulated in a frame of reference fixed on the rigid body under flow-structure interaction (the target) so that the coupled system can be solved non-iteratively, accurately, and efficiently. The implicit coupling of the fluid solver and dynamics and kinematics of rigid bodies ensures the method being stable for low solid-to-fluid mass ratios. The influence of fictitious fluid inside the rigid body is considered and the spurious oscillations in surface stresses are filtered to impose physically correct rigid body dynamics. Similar to many predecessors of the immersed boundary projection method, the resulting discrete system is solved efficiently using a block-LU decomposition. We then validate the method with two-dimensional test problems of a neutrally buoyant cylinder migrating in a planar Couette flow and a freely falling or rising cylindrical rigid body.

Direct Numerical Simulations of a Great Horn Owl in Flapping Flight

The fluid dynamics of owls in flapping flight is studied by coordinated experiments and computations. The great horned owl was selected, which is nocturnal, stealthy, and relatively large sized raptor. On the experimental side, perch-to-perch flight was considered in an open wind tunnel. The owl kinematics was captured with multiple cameras from different view angles. The kinematic extraction was central in driving the computations, which were designed to resolve all significant spatio-temporal scales in the flow with an unprecedented level of resolution. The wing geometry was extracted from the planform image of the owl wing and a three-dimensional model, the reference configuration, was reconstructed. This configuration was then deformed in time to best match the kinematics recorded during flights utilizing an image-registration technique based on the large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping framework. All simulations were conducted using an eddy-resolving, high-fidelity, solver, where the large displacements/deformations of the flapping owl model were introduced with an immersed boundary formulation. We report detailed information on the spatio-temporal flow dynamics in the near wake including variables that are challenging to measure with sufficient accuracy, such as aerodynamic forces. At the same time, our results indicate that high-fidelity computations over smooth wings may have limitations in capturing the full range of flow phenomena in owl flight. The growth and subsequent separation of the laminar boundary layers developing over the wings in this Reynolds number regime is sensitive to the surface micro-features that are unique to each species.

Sdfibm: a signed distance field based discrete forcing immersed boundary method in OpenFOAM

In this paper we present the algorithm and implementation of an open-source immersed boundary code sdfibm, which is based on OpenFOAM v6 and written in C++. The immersed boundary method (“ibm” of the name) treats the velocity field as the volume average of fluid and solid velocities, and applies the volume-average discrete forcing to account for the fluid–solid interaction. The signed distance field (“sdf” of the name) representation of the solid shape, together with the proposed pyramid decomposition method, allow accurate calculations of the volume fraction field created by solids overlapping with an arbitrary unstructured fluid mesh. SDF removes the need of intersection test between the solid and fluid mesh, or the discretization and re-sampling of the solid shape. Users can freely combine different components (shapes, materials, and motion constraints) into new solids within the plain-text input file, and implement new shapes and motion constrains easily. sdfibm is an efficient and robust tool for exploring complex fluid–solid interactions in a fully-resolved sense, and can generate data for closure models in upscaling procedures. Program summaryProgram title:sdfibmCPC Library link to program files:http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/hcvtddjngv.1Licensing provisions: GNU General Public License 3Programming language: C++Nature of problem: Fluid–structure interaction and particle-laden multi-phase flow problems, with the structure/solid phase being rigid bodies. Examples range from classic flows passing stationary cylinder or sphere, to the sedimentation of a cluster of particles. Thanks to the fully-resolved direct numerical simulation, detail data of the flow field and particle motion are obtained as part of the solution, which can be used to analyze the dynamic process and to build coarse-grain models for industrial scale simulations.Solution method: The solution method can be divided into the fluid part and the solid part. For the fluid part, the Navier–Stokes equations are solved via the projection method. Because of the collocated arrangement of variables, a mesh face based flux field is used to enforce the divergence-free condition. The solid part follows Newtonian dynamics and is solved using linear multi-step method. The coupling of the two is via volume-average discrete forcing, which is an immersed boundary formulation suitable for rigid bodies. To find the forcing, the solid volume fraction at each fluid mesh cell is needed, which is calculated accurately on arbitrary unstructured meshes using signed distance field.

An immersed boundary formulation incorporating a two-layer wall model approach for RANS simulations with complex geometry

We propose an immersed boundary (IB) formulation incorporating a two-layer wall model approach for Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations with complex geometry. The main objective of the present study is to broaden the capability of the IB method to high-Reynolds number turbulent flows with non-equilibrium effects. A two-layer wall model is applied to the IB method by considering a thin boundary layer approximation near the wall in order to reduce the computational cost of resolving the turbulent boundary layer. Tangential pressure gradient and convective terms are included in the thin boundary layer equation to make the wall model suitable for non-equilibrium flows, in which cross-derivative terms are modeled along the wall-normal direction to maintain the ordinary differential form of the equation. Turbulent viscosity in the inner layer is determined using a simplified k−ϵ−fμ model, that performs better than the typical mixing-length model in the separation and reattachment regions, where the friction velocity uτ becomes zero. To impose the mass conservation constraint near the IB surface with marginal computational cost, the IB approximated domain method is applied. The proposed IB formulation is validated using numerical simulations of two-dimensional turbulent channel flow, backward-facing step flow, turbulent flow around a circular cylinder, and three-dimensional turbulent flow over a wall-mounted circular sphere with a relatively coarse grid near the IB surface. The results demonstrate that the proposed IB formulation captures the flow patterns well and accurately predicts wall shear stress for both equilibrium and non-equilibrium flows, even with a relatively coarse grid near the wall.

A robust sharp interface based immersed boundary framework for moving body problems with applications to laminar incompressible flows

This study presents a robust, sharp interface immersed boundary (IBM) framework for moving body problems. The in-house solver makes use of a density-based finite volume framework for solving unsteady, 3D Favre averaged Navier Stokes equation in a generalized curvilinear coordinate system. The immersed boundary formulation is capable of handling arbitrarily complex three-dimensional bodies. The sharp interface approach allows for the exact imposition of boundary conditions at the immersed surface by reconstructing the flow field along its local normal. The implemented reconstruction schemes maintain second-order accuracy. The study focuses on issues of mass conservation and spurious temporal oscillations (pressure as well as force) that the sharp interface IBM approach typically faces when encountering moving body problems. A ghost node-based field extension technique provides an efficient way to improve mass conservation and as a result, reduces not only spurious oscillations but also increases temporal accuracy. Flow past both bluff body (triangular, circular and spherical), as well as streamlined body (airfoil), is presented here as validation studies. The ability of the present formulation to deal with moving body problems in the laminar incompressible flow regime is demonstrated by presenting cases that involve motions such as pitching and in-line oscillation. The predictions are found to be in good agreement with the published results and measurements as well.

An immersed interface method for discrete surfaces

Fluid-structure systems occur in a range of scientific and engineering applications. The immersed boundary (IB) method is a widely recognized and effective modeling paradigm for simulating fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in such systems, but a difficulty of the IB formulation of these problems is that the pressure and viscous stress are generally discontinuous at fluid-structure interfaces. The conventional IB method regularizes these discontinuities, which typically yields low-order accuracy at these interfaces. The immersed interface method (IIM) is an IB-like approach to FSI that sharply imposes stress jump conditions, enabling higher-order accuracy, but prior applications of the IIM have been largely restricted to numerical methods that rely on smooth representations of the interface geometry. This paper introduces an immersed interface formulation that uses only a C0 representation of the immersed interface, such as those provided by standard nodal Lagrangian finite element methods. Verification examples for models with prescribed interface motion demonstrate that the method sharply resolves stress discontinuities along immersed boundaries while avoiding the need for analytic information about the interface geometry. Our results also demonstrate that only the lowest-order jump conditions for the pressure and velocity gradient are required to realize global second-order accuracy. Specifically, we demonstrate second-order global convergence rates along with nearly second-order local convergence in the Eulerian velocity field, and between first- and second-order global convergence rates along with approximately first-order local convergence for the Eulerian pressure field. We also demonstrate approximately second-order local convergence in the interfacial displacement and velocity along with first-order local convergence in the fluid traction along the interface. As a demonstration of the method's ability to tackle more complex geometries, the present approach is also used to simulate flow in a patient-averaged anatomical model of the inferior vena cava, which is the large vein that carries deoxygenated blood from the lower and middle body back to the heart. Comparisons of the general hemodynamics and wall shear stress obtained by the present IIM and a body-fitted discretization approach show that the present method yields results that are in good agreement with those obtained by the body-fitted approach.

IB-WENO method for incompressible flow with elastic boundaries

Abstract We present a new approach to compute the interaction between an elastic boundary and an incompressible viscous fluid, by integrating the immersed boundary method and a finite difference WENO scheme. The hybrid algorithm maintains simple and efficient treatment of the moving interface based on the immersed boundary formulation, and achieves high-order accuracy, with the WENO method and the Hodge decomposition technique employed, in the majority of the fluid domain that does not contain the interface. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm and its various numerical components through a number of computational examples.

An immersed boundary method for simulating Newtonian vesicles in viscoelastic fluid

In this paper, a two-dimensional immersed boundary method is developed to simulate the dynamics of Newtonian vesicle in viscoelastic Oldroyd-B fluid under shear flow. The viscoelasticity effect of extra stress is well incorporated into the immersed boundary formulation using the indicator function. Our numerical methodology is first validated in comparison with theoretical results in purely Newtonian fluid, and then a series of numerical experiments is conducted to study the effects of different dimensionless parameters on the vesicle motions. Although the tank-treading (TT) motion of Newtonian vesicle in Oldroyd-B fluid under shear flow can be observed just like in Newtonian fluid, it is surprising to find that the stationary inclination angle can be negative without the transition to tumbling (TB) motion. Moreover, the inertia effect plays a significant role that is able to turn the vesicle back to positive inclination angle through TT-TB-TT transition as the Reynolds number increases. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first numerical work for the detailed investigations of Newtonian vesicle dynamics suspended in viscoelastic Oldroyd-B fluid. We believe that our numerical results can be used to motivate further studies in theory and experiments for such coupling vesicle problems.

Development and validation of a stabilized immersed boundary CFD model for freezing and melting with natural convection

Numerous processes in the automotive, additive manufacturing or energy storage industries require an accurate prediction of the solidification (freezing) and melting (thawing) dynamics of substances. The numerical modeling of these phase changes is highly complex because it includes sharp moving interfaces and strong discontinuities in the material properties. This complexity is often exacerbated by the occurrence of natural convection, which induces a strong coupling between the motion of the liquid and the position of the solid–liquid interface. This leads to strongly coupled non-linear thermo-fluid problems which have to be solved in complex geometries.In this work, we introduce two novel stabilized finite element models to predict the phase change with natural convection. The first model uses a more classical viscosity approach to impose stasis in the solid region whereas the second one is based on an immersed boundary formulation to accurately describe the solid–fluid interface.The efficiency of the stabilization is first demonstrated by studying the Stefan problem. The two approaches to impose stasis are then compared using 2D test cases before they are both used to study melting in a rectangular (2D) and prismatic (3D) cavity. Significant differences are observed in the flow profiles and the solid–liquid interface position between the 2D and the 3D simulations.

An immersed boundary formulation for simulating high-speed compressible viscous flows with moving solids

We present a robust sharp-interface immersed boundary method for numerically studying high speed flows of compressible and viscous fluids interacting with arbitrarily shaped either stationary or moving rigid solids. The Navier–Stokes equations are discretized on a rectangular Cartesian grid based on a low-diffusion flux splitting method for inviscid fluxes and conservative high-order central-difference schemes for the viscous components. Discontinuities such as those introduced by shock waves and contact surfaces are captured by using a high-resolution weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme. Ghost cells in the vicinity of the fluid–solid interface are introduced to satisfy boundary conditions on the interface. Values of variables in the ghost cells are found by using a constrained moving least squares method (CMLS) that eliminates numerical instabilities encountered in the conventional MLS formulation. The solution of the fluid flow and the solid motion equations is advanced in time by using the third-order Runge–Kutta and the implicit Newmark integration schemes, respectively. The performance of the proposed method has been assessed by computing results for the following four problems: shock-boundary layer interaction, supersonic viscous flows past a rigid cylinder, moving piston in a shock tube and lifting off from a flat surface of circular, rectangular and elliptic cylinders triggered by shock waves, and comparing computed results with those available in the literature.

An Immersed Boundary method with divergence-free velocity interpolation and force spreading

The Immersed Boundary (IB) method is a mathematical framework for constructing robust numerical methods to study fluid–structure interaction in problems involving an elastic structure immersed in a viscous fluid. The IB formulation uses an Eulerian representation of the fluid and a Lagrangian representation of the structure. The Lagrangian and Eulerian frames are coupled by integral transforms with delta function kernels. The discretized IB equations use approximations to these transforms with regularized delta function kernels to interpolate the fluid velocity to the structure, and to spread structural forces to the fluid. It is well-known that the conventional IB method can suffer from poor volume conservation since the interpolated Lagrangian velocity field is not generally divergence-free, and so this can cause spurious volume changes. In practice, the lack of volume conservation is especially pronounced for cases where there are large pressure differences across thin structural boundaries. The aim of this paper is to greatly reduce the volume error of the IB method by introducing velocity-interpolation and force-spreading schemes with the properties that the interpolated velocity field in which the structure moves is at least C1 and satisfies a continuous divergence-free condition, and that the force-spreading operator is the adjoint of the velocity-interpolation operator. We confirm through numerical experiments in two and three spatial dimensions that this new IB method is able to achieve substantial improvement in volume conservation compared to other existing IB methods, at the expense of a modest increase in the computational cost. Further, the new method provides smoother Lagrangian forces (tractions) than traditional IB methods. The method presented here is restricted to periodic computational domains. Its generalization to non-periodic domains is important future work.

Direct Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Katabatic Slope Flows with an Immersed-Boundary Method

We investigate a Cartesian-mesh immersed-boundary formulation within an incompressible flow solver to simulate laminar and turbulent katabatic slope flows. As a proof-of-concept study, we consider four different immersed-boundary reconstruction schemes for imposing a Neumann-type boundary condition on the buoyancy field. Prandtl’s laminar solution is used to demonstrate the second-order accuracy of the numerical solutions globally. Direct numerical simulation of a turbulent katabatic flow is then performed to investigate the applicability of the proposed schemes in the turbulent regime by analyzing both first- and second-order statistics of turbulence. First-order statistics show that turbulent katabatic flow simulations are noticeably sensitive to the specifics of the immersed-boundary formulation. We find that reconstruction schemes that work well in the laminar regime may not perform as well when applied to a turbulent regime. Our proposed immersed-boundary reconstruction scheme agrees closely with the terrain-fitted reference solutions in both flow regimes.

A strongly-coupled immersed-boundary formulation for thin elastic structures

We present a strongly-coupled immersed-boundary method for flow–structure interaction problems involving thin deforming bodies. The method is stable for arbitrary choices of solid-to-fluid mass ratios and for large body motions. As with many strongly-coupled immersed-boundary methods, our method requires the solution of a nonlinear algebraic system at each time step. The system is solved through iteration, where the iterates are obtained by linearizing the system and performing a block-LU factorization. This restricts all iterations to small-dimensional subsystems that scale with the number of discretization points on the immersed surface, rather than on the entire flow domain. Moreover, the iteration procedure we propose does not involve heuristic regularization parameters, and has converged in a small number of iterations for all problems we have considered. We derive our method for general deforming surfaces, and verify the method with two-dimensional test problems of geometrically nonlinear flags undergoing large amplitude flapping behavior.

Benchmark simulations of flow past rigid bodies using an open-source, sharp interface immersed boundary method

This study reports benchmark results for a new immersed boundary method based finite-volume solver within the framework of the open-source toolbox foam-extend 3.2. The immersed boundary formulation uses a discrete forcing approach based on a weighted least squares approximation that preserves the sharpness of the boundary. Five test cases with increasing complexity are used. Results are also presented for the flow past a low-aspect-ratio plate that pitches about its leading edge at a Reynolds number of 2000. Force coefficient results are compared with available experimental and computational data. The results show that foam-extend 3.2 appears to be a promising open-source tool for solving flows with steady and unsteady immersed boundaries.

Controlling droplet bouncing and coalescence with surfactant

The collision between aqueous drops in air typically leads to coalescence after impact. Rebounding of the droplets with similar sizes at atmospheric conditions is not generated, unless with significantly large pressure or high impact parameters exhibiting near-grazing collision. Here we demonstrate experimentally the creation of a non-coalescent regime through addition of a small amount of water-soluble surfactant. We perform a direct simulation to account for the continuum and short-range flow dynamics of the approaching interfaces, as affected by the soluble surfactant. Based on the immersed-boundary formulation, a conservative scheme is developed for solving the coupled surface-bulk convection–diffusion concentration equations, which presents excellent mass preservation in the solvent as well as conservation of total surfactant mass. We show that the Marangoni effect, caused by non-uniform distributions of surfactant on the droplet surface and surface tension, induces stresses that oppose the draining of gas in the interstitial gap, and hence prohibits merging of the interfaces. In such gas–liquid systems, the repulsion caused by the addition of surfactant, as frequently observed in liquid–liquid systems such as emulsions in the form of an electric double-layer force, was found to be too weak to dominate in the attainable range of interfacial separation distances. These results thus identify the key mechanisms governing the impact dynamics of surfactant-coated droplets in air and imply the potential of using a small amount of surfactant to manipulate impact outcomes, for example, to prevent coalescence between droplets or interfaces in gases.

A Gaussian-like immersed-boundary kernel with three continuous derivatives and improved translational invariance

The immersed boundary (IB) method is a general mathematical framework for studying problems involving fluid–structure interactions in which an elastic structure is immersed in a viscous incompressible fluid. In the IB formulation, the fluid described by Eulerian variables is coupled with the immersed structure described by Lagrangian variables via the use of the Dirac delta function. From a numerical standpoint, the Lagrangian force spreading and the Eulerian velocity interpolation are carried out by a regularized, compactly supported discrete delta function, which is assumed to be a tensor product of a single-variable immersed-boundary kernel. IB kernels are derived from a set of postulates designed to achieve approximate grid translational invariance, interpolation accuracy and computational efficiency. In this note, we present a new 6-point immersed-boundary kernel that is C3 and yields a substantially improved translational invariance compared to other common IB kernels.

An immersed boundary method for rigid bodies

We develop an immersed boundary (IB) method for modeling flows around fixed or moving rigid bodies that is suitable for a broad range of Reynolds numbers, including steady Stokes flow. The spatio-temporal discretization of the fluid equations is based on a standard staggered-grid approach. Fluid-body interaction is handled using Peskin's IB method; however, unlike existing IB approaches to such problems, we do not rely on penalty or fractional-step formulations. Instead, we use an unsplit scheme that ensures the no-slip constraint is enforced exactly in terms of the Lagrangian velocity field evaluated at the IB markers. Fractional-step approaches, by contrast, can impose such constraints only approximately. Imposing these constraints exactly requires the solution of a large linear system that includes the fluid velocity and pressure as well as Lagrange multiplier forces that impose the motion of the body. To solve this system efficiently, we develop a preconditioner for the constrained IB formulation that is based on an analytical approximation to the Schur complement. This approach is enabled by the near translational and rotational invariance of Peskin's IB method. We demonstrate that only a few cycles of a geometric multigrid method for the fluid equations are required in each application of the preconditioner, and we demonstrate robust convergence of the overall Krylov solver despite the approximations made in the preconditioner. We apply the method to a number of test problems at zero and finite Reynolds numbers, and we demonstrate first-order convergence of the method to several analytical solutions and benchmark computations.