A monolithic fluid-structure interaction formulation for solid and liquid membranes including free-surface contact

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive monolithic fluid-structure interaction formulation for membranes, capable of handling large deformations, contact, and diverse applications including free-surface contact, demonstrated through various numerical examples.

Contribution

It presents a unified FSI approach using nonlinear finite elements for membranes and Navier-Stokes for fluids, including contact and large deformation handling, with validation on multiple complex scenarios.

Findings

Successfully models balloon inflation, droplet rolling, and flag flapping.

Handles a wide Reynolds number range from 0.001 to 2000.

Incorporates contact at free surfaces and rotation-free shells.

Abstract

A unified fluid-structure interaction (FSI) formulation is presented for solid, liquid and mixed membranes. Nonlinear finite elements (FE) and the generalized-alpha scheme are used for the spatial and temporal discretization. The membrane discretization is based on curvilinear surface elements that can describe large deformations and rotations, and also provide a straightforward description for contact. The fluid is described by the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, and its discretization is based on stabilized Petrov-Galerkin FE. The coupling between fluid and structure uses a conforming sharp interface discretization, and the resulting non-linear FE equations are solved monolithically within the Newton-Raphson scheme. An arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation is used for the fluid in order to account for the mesh motion around the structure. The formulation is very general and admits diverse applications that include contact at free surfaces. This is demonstrated by two analytical and three numerical examples exhibiting strong coupling between fluid and structure. The examples include balloon inflation, droplet rolling and flapping flags. They span a Reynolds-number range from 0.001 to 2000. One of the examples considers the extension to rotation-free shells using isogeometric FE.