Mark A. Walkley

Yongxing Wang, Peter K. Jimack, Mark A. Walkley

In this article, we analyze and numerically assess a new fictitious domain method for fluid-structure interactions in two and three dimensions. The distinguishing feature of the proposed method is that it only solves for one velocity field for the whole fluid-structure domain; the interactions remain decoupled until solving the final linear algebraic equations. To achieve this the finite element procedures are carried out separately on two different meshes for the fluid and solid respectively, and the assembly of the final linear system brings the fluid and solid parts together via an isoparametric interpolation matrix between the two meshes. In this article, an implicit version of this approach is introduced. The property of energy conservation is proved, which is a strong indication of stability. The solvability and error estimate for the corresponding stationary problem (one time step of the transient problem) are analyzed. Finally, 2D and 3D numerical examples are presented to validate the conservation properties.

Yongxing Wang, Peter K. Jimack, Mark A. Walkley

In this article we consider the widely used immersed finite element method (IFEM), in both explicit and implicit form, and its relationship to our more recent one-field fictitious domain method (FDM). We review and extend the formulation of these methods, based upon an operator splitting scheme, in order to demonstrate that both the explicit IFEM and the one-field FDM can be regarded as particular linearizations of the fully implicit IFEM. However, the one-field FDM can be shown to be more robust than the explicit IFEM and can simulate a wider range of solid parameters with a relatively large time step. In addition, it can produce results almost identical to the implicit IFEM but without iteration inside each time step. We study the effect on these methods of variations in viscosity and density of fluid and solid materials. The advantages of the one-field FDM within the IFEM framework are illustrated through a selection of parameter sets for two benchmark cases.