Steady-State Elasticity-Fluid Coupled Systems
by
Andrea Codd
University of Colorado at Boulder
Coauthors: Tom Manteuffel, Steve McCormick, John Ruge

Our aim is to develop a robust and efficient method for numerical simulation of steady-state problems that model interaction between fluid flow and elastic structures. Our focus is on flow of the aqueous humor around the iris in the eye. Since our research involves developing a new first-order system least-squares (FOSLS) approach, we begin with a much simpler problem - the 'square eye'. The FOSLS approach has been used to derive one all-encompassing functional that incorporates both the structural and the fluid flow systems, as well as a new form of elliptic grid generation (EGG) used to transform the changing fluid region to a fixed computational domain. This combined elasticity-fluid-EGG functional allows us to represent the whole problem as a single minimization principle on a fixed domain. Our initial attempts to minimise this nonlinear functional will be based on Newton's method and algebraic multigrid (AMG). This talk will outline the basic FOSLS approach and describe our progress to date.

http://amath-www.colorado.edu/appm/student/codd/Home.html

Date received: July 7, 1999