Simulation of Fluid–Structure Interaction Problems with Thin Elastic Plate via the Coupling of Finite Element and Lattice Boltzmann Methods

Abstract

A numerical framework is proposed to couple the finite element (FE) and lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) for simulating fluid–structure interaction (FSI) problems. The LBM is used as an efficient method for solving the weakly-compressible fluid flows. The corotational FE method for beam elements is used to solve the thin plate deformation. The two methods are coupled via a direct-forcing immersed boundary (IB) method with a sub-iteration scheme. A virtual structure method has been developed to improve the computational accuracy. Validations of the proposed coupling method have been carried out by testing a vortex-induced vibration problem. The numerical results are in good agreement with [Li and Favier (2017), “A non-staggered coupling of finite element and lattice Boltzmann methods via an immersed boundary scheme for fluid-structure interaction,” Comput. Fluids 143, 90–102]. The proposed method does not require heavy linear algebra calculation, which is suitable for parallel computation.