A unified continuum and variational multiscale formulation for fluids, solids, and fluid-structure interaction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified continuum modeling framework for fluids and solids using Gibbs free energy, enabling consistent treatment of compressible and incompressible regimes and facilitating fluid-structure interaction simulations.

Contribution

The work presents a novel variational multiscale formulation that unifies fluid and solid mechanics within a single thermodynamic framework, with new algorithms for stable and efficient numerical discretization.

Findings

Effective in modeling both fluids and solids

Achieves optimal high-frequency dissipation

Demonstrates robustness in benchmark problems

Abstract

We develop a unified continuum modeling framework for viscous fluids and hyperelastic solids using the Gibbs free energy as the thermodynamic potential. This framework naturally leads to a pressure primitive variable formulation for the continuum body, which is well-behaved in both compressible and incompressible regimes. Our derivation also provides a rational justification of the isochoric-volumetric additive split of free energies in nonlinear continuum mechanics. The variational multiscale analysis is performed for the continuum model to construct a foundation for numerical discretization. We first consider the continuum body instantiated as a hyperelastic material and develop a variational multiscale formulation for the hyper-elastodynamic problem. The generalized-alpha method is applied for temporal discretization. A segregated algorithm for the nonlinear solver is designed and carefully analyzed. Second, we apply the new formulation to construct a novel unified formulation for fluid-solid coupled problems. The variational multiscale formulation is utilized for spatial discretization in both fluid and solid subdomains. The generalized-alpha method is applied for the whole continuum body, and optimal high-frequency dissipation is achieved in both fluid and solid subproblems. A new predictor multi-corrector algorithm is developed based on the segregated algorithm to attain a good balance between robustness and efficiency. The efficacy of the new formulations is examined in several benchmark problems. The results indicate that the proposed modeling and numerical methodologies constitute a promising technology for biomedical and engineering applications, particularly those necessitating incompressible models.