Modeling and Simulation for Fluid-Rotating Structure Interaction

TL;DR

This paper presents a new fluid-structure interaction model for spinning elastic structures using an ALE method, with a novel mesh generation technique and a well-posed saddle-point formulation validated through numerical experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a linear constitutive model and a novel ALE mapping for simulating spinning elastic structures in fluid, with a well-posed saddle-point system discretized by finite elements.

Findings

Successful simulation of deforming, rotating elastic structures in fluid.

Validation of the model with realistic hydro-turbine example.

Demonstration of the method's stability and accuracy.

Abstract

In this paper, we study a dynamic fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model for an elastic structure that is immersed and spinning in the fluid. We develop a linear constitutive model to describe the motion of a rotational elastic structure which is suitable for the application of arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method in FSI simulation. Additionally, a novel ALE mapping method is designed to generate the moving fluid mesh while the deformable structure spins in a non-axisymmetric fluid channel. The structure velocity is adopted as the principle unknown to form a monolithic saddle-point system together with fluid velocity and pressure. We discretize the nonlinear saddle-point system with mixed finite element method and Newton's linearization, and prove that the derived saddle-point problem is well-posed. The developed methodology is applied to a self-defined elastic structure and a realistic hydro-turbine under a prescribed angular velocity. Both illustrate the satisfactory numerical results of an elastic structure that is deforming and rotating while interacting with the fluid. The numerical validation is also conducted to demonstrate the modeling consistency.