An Efficient Parallel Algorithm for Solving Fluid-Structure Interaction Problems
by
Ravishekar Kannan
Iowa State University
Coauthors: Tan X.G., Chen Z.J., Marella S, Przekwas A.

A novel process to parallelize the simulation of Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) problems is presented. This process integrates the diverse nature of the fluid flow and the structure deformation/dynamics equations without compromising their individual efficiency.

Traditionally the parallelization of the FSI has had limited if not any success. This is due to the conflicting numerical method for solving the fluid flow (cell center based finite volume method) and the structures (node based finite element method) equations. Further complications arise from the domain decomposition of FVM and FEM domains and from the movement of structures domain across the domain decomposition boundaries. Furthermore the structures domain displacement “deforms” the fluid domain grid which needs to be “remeshed” at each time step and every iteration. The current approach still partitions the domain based on the cell number (suiting Finite Volume). The nodes are then allocated in each processor based on the cell-to-node connectivity. The FEM and the finite volume equations are iteratively solved and the grid is adapted by treating the entire domain as one solid domain.

This approach was implemented in CFDRC CoBi code and used for several FSI problems such as flow over a flexible plate, blast wave structure interaction, structures-acoustics of a human head, and others. The results obtained were in good agreement with the serial runs.

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Date received: August 17, 2007