Particle Finite Element Method for 2D/3D Fluid-Structure Interactions, Including Contact Interactions

The present work focuses on the simulation of 2D and 3D Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI)
problems involving fluid free surfaces, large deformations of solids including plasticity
and solid-solid contact mechanics, incompressible and weakly compressible flows. The
considered approach is the partitioned coupling between two independent solvers, one for
the fluid and one for the solid. The two solvers are precompiled and wrapped in Python
objects that are called by the coupling algorithm using the Dirichlet-Neumann paradigm. In particular, the new fluid solver uses a Particle Finite Element Method (PFEM), an
adaptive mesh-based Lagrangian algorithm allowing a straightforward tracking of the free
surface and deformation of the fluid domain. The solid solver uses a nonlinear finite
element algorithm with an updated Lagrangian formalism. In this work, the codes
previously developed in have been extended for performing 3D FSI simulations.
In addition, we enable a faster resolution of existing 2D problems as well as new test
cases featuring an additional complexity. Notably, one of our main challenges is the
numerical efficiency of the algorithms, where both the quality of remeshing procedure
and the execution time of the codes are key factors for the reliability and accuracy of the
solution. In addition to a discussion about the concepts presented above, this presentation
will include, but will not be limited to, some examples and comparisons between 2D/3D
FSI simulations such as the displacement and deformation of solid walls due an incident fluid flow or solid-solid contacts between debris in a pipe.