COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS New Trends and Applications S. Idelsohn, E. Oate and E. Dvorkin (Eds.

) n c CIMNE, Barcelona, Spain 1998

FLUID-STRUCTURE INTERACTION BASED UPON A STABILIZED (ALE) FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm
Institute of Structural Mechanics, University of Stuttgart Pfaenwaldring 7, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany e-mail: {wall, ramm}@statik.uni-stuttgart.de web page: http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/ibs/{wall, ramm}.html

Key words: uid-structure interaction, stabilized nite element methods, arbitrary Lagrangean-Eulerian (ALE) formulation, incompressible Navier-Stokes, geometrically nonlinear structural dynamics, staggered time integration Abstract.The computational procedure presented in this study is focussed on the timedependent solution of two-dimensional coupled motions of geometrically nonlinear structures and viscous incompressible Newtonian uids. For the uid part a stabilized nite element method based upon an arbitrary Lagrangean-Eulerian (ALE) approach has been developed. For both the uid and the structural systems direct time integration schemes, along with nite element spatial discretization, are employed. In order to enable large deformations of the exible structures geometrically nonlinear eects are taken into account. The overall numerical model is treated as a three-eld problem, including the moving mesh as an own system, and solved through partitioned procedures.

Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

1 INTRODUCTION Interaction effects between structures and internal or external flows play an important role in a variety of physical systems. Very different engineering disciplines, like aerospace, civil or bioengineering are concerned with such kind of coupled problems. Thus the investigation of fluidstructure interaction problems has already a long tradition. It appears that a lot of approaches described in the literature contain rather severe restrictions with respect to the complexity of the applied models. This concerns either the level of approximation for the fluid models (potential flows, acoustics, Euler flows ...) or for the structural model (rigid bodies, linear elasticity through modal analysis ...). Formulations with a high level of physical complexity for both fields are still very rare. A classification of recent efforts in the simulation of fluidstructure interaction problems with respect to physical and numerical complexity of the involved models can be found in Cebral4. Quite a number of different approaches that emerged in recent years were concerned with the interaction of a rigid body with compressible or incompressible, viscous or inviscid fluids14, 20, 21, 28. Formulations involving flexible structures and advanced flow models have recently been published by the groups of Farhat8, Tezduyar25, Lhner4, the ISPRAgroup3 and others1, 19 due to the wide spreading character of the fluidstructure interaction research field this flash on recent contributions is necessarily incomplete. A more elaborate discussion on existing approaches and recent literature on this topic is given in reference 27. The present study presents a formulation which incorporates the complete incompressible NavierStokes equations and a geometrically nonlinear description of the structure along with a finite element discretization for both domains and a semidiscrete representation in time. Therefore, a fully stabilized finite element method for the fluid part is extended to time dependent domains and is embedded in an algorithmic framework, dealing with the involved nonlinearities and the time dimension. This extension to time dependent domains is based on an ALEformulation. The structural, i.e. the nonlinear elastodynamic, part is based on planestress elements in connection with the generalizeda time integration method. Viewing the moving mesh, needed in the ALEframework, as an own system leads to the interpretation of fluidstructure interaction as a threefield coupled problem, which will be solved through partitioned procedures. All described and developed concepts have been realized within CARAT, the Computer Aided Research Analysis Tool developed at the Institute of Structural Mechanics at the University of Stuttgart. The outline of the paper is as follows. In section 2 the problem of concern is stated along with the basic equations for the fluid and for the structural models and a review of the ALE approach. Sections 3 to 5 sketch the developed solvers for the three involved fields fluid, structure and mesh. In section 6 the derived computational procedure for the coupled problem is described. Section 7 presents some numerical examples, followed by some concluding remarks in section 8. A more detailed treatise of the different topics and developed procedures can be found in reference 27.
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM 2.1 Fluid model

The fluid part is modelled as an incompressible, viscous, isothermal, isotropic Newtonian fluid which is fully described by the instationary, incompressible NavierStokes equations. Expressed in primitive variables, velocity u and kinematic pressure p, momentum and continuity equations in an Eulerian description can be given as u ) u u * 2n t

(u) )

u + 0

p+b

in Wf in Wf

(0, T) (0, T)

(1)

with initial and boundary conditions according to u+g on G g (0, T); u + u0 n s + h in Wf for t + 0 on G h (0, T) (2)

Here n represents the kinematic viscosity, i.e. dynamic viscosity m divided by the fluid density , and s the stress tensor defined as s + pI ) 2n(u) with the symmetric part of the velocity T gradient (u) + 1 2 u ) ( u) . The whole set of equations is defined on a bounded domain Wf with boundary G, split into its complementary subsets denoted as Dirichlet boundary Gg and Neumann boundary Gh , and the time interval (0,T). In operator notation this set of equations can be denoted by L M(p, u) + u t ) L advu ) L viscu ) L presp + b L C(u) + L contu + 0 (3)

with L adv, L visc, L pres and L cont defining the advective, viscous, pressure and continuity differential operators, respectively. 2.2 Structural model

For the structural part a (total) Lagrangean description is employed. The governing equation for the structural motion/deformation describes the momentum conservation and is in this context also referred to as (Cauchy) equation of motion d+
..

@S) b
. ..

in Ws

(0, T)

(4)

with denoting the structural density, d, d and d displacement, velocity and acceleration of a material point, S the second PiolaKirchhoff stress tensor related to the Cauchy stress tensor s via a pullback operation employing the material deformation gradient and b the body force. Boundary and initial conditions are written as
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

d+d

on G d

(0, T);
. .

NS + S on G s
~

(0, T)

d + d 0; d + d 0

in Ws for t + 0

(5)

with the Dirichlet or displacement boundary Gd and Neumann or traction boundary Gs of the structural domain Ws . Assuming a linearelastic material model of St.VenantKirchhoff type (small strains), the constitutive equation for the structure leads to the following relation between the second PiolaKirchhoff stress tensor S and the GreenLagrange strain tensor E S+C:E (6)

with C denoting the constitutive tensor. The range of large displacements is captured if the fully nonlinear kinematic relations are applied E + 1 F T @ F*I 2 Here F is the material deformation gradient. 2.3 Arbitrary Lagrangean Eulerian (ALE) formulation (7)

As given in the previous sections, fluid equations are traditionally described in an Eulerian formulation whereas a Lagrangean description is used for the structural part. This is due to the respective advantages of either formulation: easy capturing of large deformations and proper definition of the boundary. In order to close the gap between the fluid and structural domains an Arbitrary Lagrangean Eulerian (ALE) formulation is employed for parts of the fluid domain. ALE techniques were originally developed along with finite differences (e.g. Hirt et al.13) and were later on also derived in connection with finite elements (e.g. Hughes et al.17, Donea7, Huerta and Liu15). The basic idea is the introduction of an additional reference domain Wx with reference coordinates x. Material domain / coordinates and spatial domain / coordinates are denoted by Wz / z and Wy / y, respectively. This reference domain is allowed to move arbitrarily independent of spatial or material points. Continuum mechanical derivations are now made for points defined by a fixed position in this reference domain. For the formulation of conservation laws the material time derivative of some quantity f, f Df + (z, t) t Dt + f (x, t) t ) ci f (y, t) yi (8)

also referred to as ALE fundamental equation, is needed. Here, c denotes the ALE convective velocity, given as difference between particle and mesh velocity. It is important to note that ALE is not a question of the specifically chosen coordinate system but rather a question of the point of reference for the continuum mechanical view. For the ease of implementation a formulation written in spatial coordinates y while keeping the time derivative in reference coordinates x is
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

employed. Exemplified for this case conservation of momentum, already given for an Eulerian description in (1), transforms to s ij u ui ) cj i + ) b i in Wy t x yj yj (9)

with s denoting the Cauchy stress tensor. In the finite element context the arbitrarily moving finite element mesh serves as representation of the reference domain as sketched in Fig. 1. As can be seen from this figure in special cases of an ALE description certain points, of course, can represent pure Eulerian (E) or Lagrangean (L) character, respectively.
t E L y2 E ... Euler node L ... Lagrange node

reference domain spatial domain material domain y1 continuum

Figure 1: Arbitrary Lagrangean Eulerian description

Since ALE is a continuum mechanical formulation rather than a specific technique, in the authors opinion, one should also denote spacetime concepts with deforming domains, like the DSD/ST (deforming spatial domain/space time) method of Tezduyar et al.26 or Hansbos12 approach among others, as ALE formulation. 3 COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS (CFD) SOLVER One concept to deal with the numerical problems associated with the finite element solution of the incompressible NavierStokes equations stated in section 2.1, like incompressibility, pressurecoupling, hyperbolic character, in a unified way is the concept of stabilized finite element methods. On the one hand this concept originates from the streamline upwind PetrovGalerkin (SUPG) method, introduced by Brooks and Hughes2 for advection dominated flows, and on the other hand on the circumventing BabuskaBrezzi (CBB) method, introduced by Hughes et al.16 for the Stokes problem. Numerous papers have been published on this subject since then. Applying the method of weighted residuals and a BubnovGalerkin type approximation to equations (1), the general variational formulation for a stabilized finite element method can be written as
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

Find u h

V h and p h g

Ph :

v h, q h

Vh

Ph

u h ) u h u h, v h ) 2n(u h), (v h) * v h, p h * t + b, v h ) h, v h
Gh

u h, q h ) ST (10)

with V h and P h denoting appropriate finitedimensional function spaces and v h and q h denoting g the respective test functions for velocities and pressures. Using the operator notation of (3) the stabilization term ST, introduced in (10), is given as ST +
K Ch

R M p h, u h , t M L q h, v h

) R C u h , t C L cont v h

(11)

where R M and R C represent the residuals of the momentum and continuity equations, respectively and L is a subset of L M of (3). t M and t C are referred to as stabilization parameters. As can be seen from (11), the stabilization terms are mesh dependent terms, evaluated elementwise the sum over all elements K of the triangulation C h and are functions of the residuals of the Euler Lagrange equations. Thus stability is enhanced, still preserving consistency and accuracy. Different methods emanate, depending on which parts of the differential operator L M are included in the definition for L q h, v h in (11). Therefore methods like the streamline upwind PetrovGalerkin method (SUPG), the pressure stabilizing PetrovGalerkin method (PSPG), the pure or unusual Galerkin leastsquares method (GLS), are included in this definition. In this study a fully stabilized finite element method for incompressible, viscous flows on timedependent domains is developed, based on the fixed domain method of Franca and Frey11 and the ALE approach discussed in section 2.3. Fully in this context refers to the inclusion of all terms (except the time derivative) of the differential operator L M in the definition for L q h, v h . The method can be written as Find u h V h and p h g Ph : v h, q h Vh Ph

B u h, p h, v h , q h + F v h, q h with the appropriate function spaces given as Vh + vh Vh + vh g H 1 Wf H 1 Wf 0

N N

(12)

vh K
N

R k(K) , K

Ch (13)

vh K

R k(K) , K ph K

C h, v h + g on G g R k(K), K Ch

Ph + ph

C0 Wf

L 2 Wf 0
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

R k(K) N denotes an interpolation of order k on element K in the Ndimensional space and H 1 de0 notes the first order Sobolev space with compact support. In full length the left hand side of (12) takes the form B u h, p h, v h , q h + )
K Ch

u h ) c h u h, v h ) 2n(u h), (v h) * t x u h ) c h u h ) p h * 2n t x t mom y, Re K(y)

v h, p h (vh)

u h , q h

(uh),
K

c h v h * q h2n

u h, t

cont

vh

(14)
K

whereas the right hand side can be written as F v h, q h + f, w h ) h, v h )

K Ch Gh

f, t mom y, Re K(y)

c h v h * q h2n

(vh)

(15)
K

The stabilization parameters could be defined as t mom + hK c Re K(y) ; 2 c h(y) 2 t cont + c h(y) 2h Kc Re K(y) (16)

with c being defined as the function c Re K(y) + Re K(y), 1, 0 v Re K(y) t 1, Re K(y) w 1 (17)

of the modified element Reynolds number Re K(y) + m K c h(y) ph K 4n(y) (18)

h K is a measure for the element size and m K a measure for the order of interpolation, respectively. An important feature of this definition appears in the case when, through application of the ALE approach, local Lagrangean regions appear, where the NavierStokes equations turn to time dependent Stokes problems. The above definition ensures that in this case the stability parameters take the correct order with respect to the element length h K. When the trial functions are expanded in terms of their finite element basis or shape functions, the semidiscrete matrix equation emanates
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

M fu ) N f(u)u ) G fp + F f

(19)

For time discretization of the first order equations as well as for the treatment of the involved nonlinearities different methods have been adopted. This includes methods like the fractional stepQ scheme, semiimplicit one and twostep methods, semiexplicit methods and fixed point as well as Newton iterative schemes. For the ease of presentation only the simplest scheme, the onestepQ scheme, is discussed leading to a system of equations of the form Mf(u) ) QDtN f(u n)1) u n)1 ) QDtG fp n)1 + M f(u)(1Q)DtN f(u n) u n(1Q)DtG fp n
n)1 ) QDt F f n ) (1Q)Dt F f

(20)

When choosing Q u 0 an implicit scheme results. Often this nonlinear system of equations needs not to be iterated until convergence in every time step, i.e. only one iteration step of a fixed point like scheme could be performed resulting in a kind of semiimplicit method. This approach could be interpreted as linearization through extrapolation in time. As discussed earlier, the domain on which integration has to be performed is deforming with time. Formation of the element matrices therefore means integration over the element domain at a certain time instance governed by the time integration parameters. 4 COMPUTATIONAL STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS (CSD) ANALYZER Spatial discretization of the structural model presented in chapter 2.2 is done through different types of planestress elements for the twodimensional problems under investigation. On the one hand fully integrated 9node and reduced integrated 8node displacement elements are used. On the other hand hybridmixed elements, like enhanced assumed strain (EAS) or hybrid stress elements, are utilized. In the surface coupled problem context the second class of elements can also be employed, as pure displacement elements since involved additional quantities, stemming from the underlying multifield functionals, are eliminated on the element level. Therefore in the global system matrices only displacement degrees of freedom remain a crucial point with respect to load and motion transfer at the fluidstructure interface. Once the spatial discretization is done, the nonlinear semidiscrete equation of motion is M sd ) C sd ) N s(d) + F s
.. .

(21)

where M s is the structural mass matrix, N s is the vector of internal forces and F s denotes the external forces. Damping of the structure could be included in the model via the damping matrix C s. This however is negligible in many cases since the major source of damping for the structure results from the surrounding fluid. In the present approach the system given in (21) is solved using the Generalizeda Method of Chung and Hulbert5 along with consistent linearization and a NewtonRaphson iterative
8

Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

scheme. The Generalizeda Method is an implicit, onestep time integration scheme based on Newmark approximations in the time domain and contains schemes like the HilberHughes Taylor method, the Bossaka method or the Newmark method (with its submethods trapezoidal or midpoint, linear acceleration, FoxGoodwin, central difference, etc.) as special cases. Therefore a modified form of the equation of motion M s d a ) N s (d) + F s a a
..

(22)

is introduced. Subscripts a denote evaluation of the respective quantities within the time interval according to time integration parameters a m and a f which may be individually selected. d a + (1 * a m) d da + 1 * af d
. .. .. n)1

) am d ) af d
.n

.. n

N s (d) + 1a f N s d n)1 ) a f N s(d n) a F s + 1 * a f F s d n)1 ) a f F s(d n) a

. n)1

(23)

Herein Newmark approximation in the time domain, i.e. a linear approximation of the acceleration within the time interval with a modification through the Newmark parameters d and b, is used which is given by
. d * b . n d * 2b .. n d * Dtd d + d d n)1 * d n * bDt b 2b .n .. n d + 1 2 d n)1 * d n * 1 d * 1 * 1 d 2b bDt bDt ..

(24)

The resulting scheme is second order accurate and an appropriate selection of the involved time integration and Newmark parameters governs its numerical characteristics, i.e. its numerical dissipation of low and high frequency modes and its stability. 5 COMPUTATIONAL MESH DYNAMICS (CMD) SOLVER The flexibility gained through employing an ALE concept for moving domain flow problems of course has to be paid for, since the arbitrary movement of the reference domain, i.e. the mesh, has to be fixed asking for some kind of mesh moving scheme. Possibilities for the definition of the mesh movement are the use of userprescribed functions (applicable when dealing with simple geometries) or some kind of mesh smoothing algorithms. A very powerful approach is to view the mesh as a pseudostructural system. This could be done through a kind of spring/mass type idealization (see e.g. Farhat8) or by solving directly the elasticity equations (see e.g. Johnson and Tezduyar18). In the present study a pseudostructural approach is adopted. In this context the mesh is viewed as an own system and therefore the fluidstructure interaction problem will be formulated as a coupled threefield rather than a twofield problem. Considering the mesh as an elastic body
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

leads to the solution of an equation similar to (21) within the presented CMD solver. In this context, however, geometrically nonlinear effects are neglected leading to a linear system of equations. Timedependent effects are skipped in order to avoid numerical difficulties which could arise through artificially oscillating meshes. Thus the CMD solver consists in the solution of an elastostatic system of equations Km q + Fm with q + d on G FS and q + 0 on G \ G FS (25)

per structural time step. The mesh deformations q are driven through the structural displacements d on the fluidstructure interface GFS . These displacement boundary conditions are incorporated in (25) through the right hand side term F m. Additional concepts realized in the presented computational procedure in order to extend the versatility or to reduce the computational costs in connection with our pseudostructural approach are: D assigning different element stiffnesses to small and large elements (just by neglecting the Jacobian determinant during element integration) or to elements close or far from the structure D applying constraints related to the movement of the structure to certain mesh areas in order to increase the domain of influence of the applied prescribed deformations D restricting the moving mesh domain only to a certain part of the whole flow domain close to the structure D when using direct solvers reusing the factorized stiffness matrix for several steps and just backsubstituting with the new right hand side vector emanating from the respective structural deformations D applying only a few iteration steps when using iterative solvers, instead of iterating until convergence

6 COUPLED PROCEDURE Two different approaches are available for the solution of the resulting threefield coupled problem (see Fig. 2) a fully coupled monolithic scheme on the one hand and solution through partitioned analysis or staggered procedures introduced by Park and Felippa22 on the other hand. The two different approaches are also sometimes referred to as strong and loose coupling, respectively (e.g. Cebral4). Due to obvious appealing features of the second approach, especially when aiming at quite general situations of fluidstructure coupled problems, a loose coupling procedure is adopted in this study. A survey on the application of partitioned analysis to coupled systems is given in Felippa et al.10.
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

Computational Fluid Dynamics CFD: M fu ) N f(u)u ) G fp + F f Computational Structural Dynamics CSD: M sd ) C sd ) N s(d) + F s Computational Mesh Dynamics (ALE) CMD: K mq + F m
.. . .

Strong coupling: CSD CMD CFD Loose coupling: CSD CMD CFD

Figure 2: Overview of threefield coupled problem and principle coupling strategies

The overall partitioned computational procedure, consisting of the implicit solvers described in the previous chapters, used in this study can roughly be described through the following scheme: Initialize CSD, CMD and CFD solvers Begin global time loop Global time step tn ! tn+1 CSD advance structural system n ! n+1 TRANSFER structural displacements at fluidstructure interface as kinematic boundary conditions to CMD solver 6. CMD elastostatic solution for mesh movement within timestep 7. TRANSFER mesh deformations and mesh velocities to CFD solver 8. CFD advance fluid system n ! n+1 9. TRANSFER pressure (and viscous stresses) at fluidstructure interface as external (fluid) loads to CSD solver 10. Set n = n+1 and go back to step 3 11. End global time loop It could appear in many situations that the involved time scales for the structural and the fluid system and/or the optimal time step sizes for the CSD and CFD solvers are quite different. In these cases one solver step of the smaller time step system in the above algorithm is replaced with a local time loop of the respective solver, in order to advance the subcycled system one global time step. In most of these cases fluid flow requires the smaller temporal resolution. Iteration (until convergence is achieved) within each time step, i.e. steps 4 to 9 in the above algorithm, turns this staggered approach over to a kind of full or strong coupling procedure. Recent presentations of a variety of staggered algorithms along with discussions with respect to accuracy, stability, subcycling and parallel processing for aeroelastic problems can be found in Farhat8 and Farhat et al.9.
11

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

In many cases load transfer at the interface can be restricted to pressure forces only and viscous forces may be neglected. Nevertheless also in these examples viscosity plays an important role in so far that the overall flow characteristics are governed and certain boundary conditions are enabled. 7 NUMERICAL EXAMPLES In order to demonstrate the performance of the overall computational procedure two examples are given. The first example is presented for verification purposes for the moving domain fluid algorithm. The second example demonstrates the ability of the scheme to deal not only with complex flow phenomena but also with large structural deformations. 7.1 Channel flow with moving indentation

To verify the presented procedure for flow simulations on time dependent domains calculations for a channel flow with a moving indentation are performed. There has been great interest in such flow examples, e.g. for studying the early stages of atherosclerosis, and therefore experimental as well as numerical results are available (see e.g. Pedley and Stephanoff23, Ralph and Pedley24, Demirdzic and Peric6).
y

h(t) x1 x3 li x 2 + 0.5(x 1 ) x 3) lo Figure 3: Geometry of fluid domain (not to scale)

h max + b

The geometry of the fluid domain (see Fig. 3) and the analytical functions approximating the channel shape used in the experiments h 0.5h 1tanh a xx 2 0 for 0 t x t x 1 for x 1 t x t x 3 for x u x 3

y(x) +

(26)

are taken from Pedley and Stephanoff23, with x 1 + 4.0 b and x 3 + 6.5 b. The channel height b is chosen to be 1.0 cm and the distances from the center of the symmetrical indentation (x + 0.0) to the inflow and outflow boundaries are l i + 8.0 cm and l o + 18.0 cm, respectively. The movement of the indentation develops as a harmonic function in time h(t) + 0.5 1 * cos 2pt ;
^

t+
^

t * t0 T

(27)

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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

with T denoting the oscillation period. As governing, dimensionless parameters for the flow phenomena the Reynolds and Strouhal numbers are defined as u b Re + 0 ; n St + b u0 T (28)

based on the bulk velocity u 0 = 1.0 cm/s. At the channel walls no slip boundary conditions were specified. All calculations started from fully developed channel flow at t + t 0 . The computational domain has been discretized with 18 x 208 x 2 stabilized P1P1 elements. The time increment Dt was approximately T/175. As mesh update strategy a simple linear interpolation scheme was employed (see Fig. 4).

Figure 4: Snapshots of moving mesh (zoom around downstream end of indentation)

In the experiments23 two different flow regimes were observed depending on the Strouhal number being less or greater than a critical value of St + 0.005, independent of the Reynolds number in the observed range 360 t Re t 1260. Two calculations are presented here, one for each flow regime, both with 38% maximum indentation (i.e. + 0.38) to study if the algorithm also correctly captures these two flow phenomena. In case the Strouhal number is less than the critical value a quasisteady flow can be observed with one eddy forming downstream of the indentation. It develops and decays in phase with the wall oscillations. The same simple flow pattern is observed in our numerical results (see Fig. 5).
t + 0.00 t + 0.23
^ ^

time

t + 0.50 t + 0.76 t + 1.00

^ ^

Figure 5: Velocity field ux and instantaneous streamlines for flow regime I St + 0.0033, Re + 507, + 0.38; (yscaling factor = 2.0)

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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

If St w 0.005 the flow is no longer quasisteady. Instead, a complex scenario of flow phenomena develops. During each cycle a propagating train of waves appears in the core flow downstream of the indentation and closed eddies form in the separated flow regions beneath their crests and above their troughs. One of the most remarkable phenomena appearing in such flows is the so called eddydoubling, i.e. eddies break up and second corotating eddies develop in the same separated flow region upstream of the primary eddies. And although the flow becomes markedly disturbed later in the cycle, all disturbances are swept downstream when the indentation is fully retracted. This also means that flow of one cycle does not interact with waves and eddies of the next cycle allowing us to study all mentioned flow phenomena during a numerical investigation of just one cycle.
t + 0.27 t + 0.44 t + 0.58 t + 0.65 t + 0.72 t + 0.82 t + 1.06 Figure 6: Velocity field ux / instantaneous streamlines (left) and pressure contours (right) for flow regime II St + 0.038, Re + 610, + 0.38; (yscaling factor = 2.0)
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

The flow structure observed in our prediction on a rather coarse grid with large time step, shown in Fig. 6, is in good agreement with both the experimental study of Pedley and Stephanoff23 and the numerical results presented in Ralph and Pedley24 and in Demirdzic and Peric6. Checking was done with respect to the appearing flow phenomena and with respect to the times when the primary and secondary vortices appear. It should be noted that both spatial and temporal discretization are significantly coarser as the ones used in reference 24 (along with an explicit finite difference scheme) and also coarser as in reference 6 (applying an implicit finite volume method). Using a linearization through extrapolation in time, instead of typically 40 iterations per time step6, additionally increases computational efficiency of the applied procedure.
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

7.2

Vortexinduced oscillations of flexible structure in the wake of a bluff body

This example has been chosen to demonstrate the ability of the procedure to deal with complex flow flexible structure interaction problems exhibiting large deformations.
y
slipbc

Fluid:
+ 1.18 10 3 10 4

1.0 1.0 4.0

0.06

12.0

m + 1.82 U + 51.3

slipbc 5.5 14.0

Figure 7: Flexible structure behind fixed, rigid bluff body (not to scale)

As sketched in Fig. 7 a slender flexible structure is fixed at the downstream end of a bluff body and developing vortices induce structural oscillations. Fluid properties are chosen according to the transverse oscillating cylinder example of Nomura and Hughes21 and are given in Fig. 7. Boundary conditions were chosen as: noslip along the body and the structure, slip boundary conditions at the top and bottom wall and do nothing outflow boundary conditions. All computations were started from a stationary flow regime obtained with a totally fixed structure. Only the mesh surrounding the structure was chosen as ALE mesh, far from the structure (closer to inflow and outflow boundary) a pure Eulerian approach was chosen. Mesh deformations were obtained by employing the pseudostructural mesh moving scheme according to section 5. Thus remeshing could be totally avoided throughout the whole simulation. Tremendous CPUtime savings were obtained through reuse of the factorized mesh stiffness matrix. In both calculations presented in Fig. 8 the mesh stiffness matrix has been assembled and factorized only once. The fluid domain was discretized with 6340 stabilized Q1Q1 elements and the structure with 20 ninenode plane stress elements. The total number of degrees of freedom was roughly 19000 for the fluid domain, 8500 for the mesh and 240 for the structural field, respectively. Figure 8 shows the response for two structural models. Displacement plots of the center and the tip of the structure, respectively, indicate that structure 1 oscillates mainly in the first mode whereas in the second structural model also higher modes clearly contribute to the structural deformation. The difference between these two models consists in a small change of Youngs modulus and a rather drastic modification of the structural density as indicated in Fig. 8, at a constant Poissons ratio of 0.35. Applying the same modifications of structural parameters for a linear structural model the first eigenfrequency would be shifted from 19.1 to 3.8 or in other terms, the oscillation period associated with the first mode would be shifted from 0.33 to 1.65.
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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 center Structure 1: E + 2.5 @ 10 6 + 0.1

tip

1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 time time 1.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 center Structure 2: E + 2.0 @ 10 6 + 2.0 tip

1.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0

Figure 8: Time history for vertical displacements of structural tip/center for two different structural models

A part of the vertical deformations time history of the second structural model is presented in Fig. 9 along with a series of scaled plots of the actual structural deformations. In this figure also the time instances for the flow snapshots, presented in Fig. 10, are indicated.
3.00 structural center

time

Flow snapshot A 3.50 Flow snapshot B Flow snapshot C

Flow snapshot D Flow snapshot E structural tip Flow snapshot F

4.00

4.50

1.25

0.0 Vertical displacements

1.25

Figure 9: Structural deformations at various time instances (square bodies not to scale)

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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

The partially complex flow characteristics are indicated through a series of flow snapshots in Fig. 10. The flow velocity vector plots reveal a series of vortices developing in the vicinity of the deformed structure. Background colors give the pressure distribution ranging from blue for low (=negative) pressure, i.e. suction, to red for high compression. The figures are scaled with the grey squares indicating the real size of the bluff body.

Figure 10: Flow snapshots pressure and velocity vectors, A (t=3.44), B (t=3.64), C (t=3.78), D (t=4.02), E (t=4.08), F (t=4.18)

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Wolfgang A. Wall and Ekkehard Ramm

8 CONCLUDING REMARKS A computational concept for fluidstructure interaction problems, capable of dealing with viscous, incompressible flows and large structural deformations, has been presented. The approach is based on finite element discretization of both the fluid and the structural domain and on direct time integration schemes. The presented stabilized finite element method for incompressible NavierStokes equations on time dependent domains, based on an ALE continuum mechanical description, has been shown to correctly capture the complex characteristics of moving domain flow problems. The overall staggered threefield solution procedure has been described and applied to an unsteady twodimensional example. Future work will, among others, focus on efficiency aspects, the threedimensional extension of the presented approach and an indepth study of different partitioned procedures as well as the application of various load and motion transfer concepts at the interface. 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The present study is supported by grants of the German National Science Foundation (DFG), within the graduate collegium Modelling and Discretization Methods for Continua and Flows and project B4 of the collaborative research center SFB 404 Multifield Problems in Continuum Mechanics. This support is gratefully acknowledged. 10 REFERENCES [1] Bathe, K.J., Zhang, H., Wang, M.H., Finite Element Analysis of Incompressible and Compressible Fluid Flows with Free Surfaces and Structural Interactions. Computers & Structures, Vol. 56, No. 2/3, 193213, (1995). [2] Brooks, A.N., Hughes, T.J.R., Streamline Upwind/PetrovGalerkin Formulations for Convection Dominated Flows with Particular Emphasis on the Incompressible NavierStokes Equations. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 32, 199259, (1982). [3] Casadei, F., Halleux, J.P., An Algorithm for Permanent FluidStructure Interaction in Explicit Transient Dynamics. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 128, 231289, (1995). [4] Cebral, J.R., Loose Coupling Algorithms for FluidStructure Interaction. Ph.D.Dissertation, Institute for Computational Sciences and Informatics, George Mason University, (1996). [5] Chung, T.J., Hulbert, G.M., A Time Integration Algorithm for Structural Dynamics with Improved Numerical Dissipation: The Generalizeda Method. Journal of Applied Mechanics, 60, 371375, (1993).
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[6] Demirdzic, I., Peric, M., Finite Volume Method for Prediction of Fluid Flow in Arbitrarily Shaped Domains with Moving Boundaries. Int. Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids, 10, 771790, (1990). [7] Dona, J., Arbitrary LagrangianEulerian Finite Element Methods. Computational Methods for Transient Analysis, T. Belytschko and T.J.R. Hughes (eds.), Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 473516, (1983). [8] Farhat, C., Parallel and Distributed Solution of Coupled Nonlinear Dynamic Aeroelastic Response Problems. Parallel Solution Methods in Computational Mechanics, Papadrakakis, M. (ed.), J. Wiley & Sons, 243301, (1997). [9] Farhat, C., Lesoinne, M., Stern, P., Lantri, S., High Performance Solution of ThreeDimensional Nonlinear Aeroelastic Problems via Parallel Partitioned Algorithms: Methodology and Preliminary Results. Advances in Engineering Software, 28, 4361, (1997). [10] Felippa, C.A., Park, K.C., Farhat, C., Partitioned Analysis of Coupled Systems. Computational Mechanics, Proc. WCCM IV Conf. Buenos Aires, Onate, E., Idelsohn, S. (eds.). CIMNE, Barcelona, (1998). [11] Franca, L.P., Frey, S.L., Stabilized Finite Element Methods: II. The Incompressible Navier Stokes Equations. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 99, 209233, (1992). [12] Hansbo, P., The Characteristic Streamline Diffusion Method for TimeDependent Incompressible NavierStokes Equations. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 99, 171186, (1992). [13] Hirt, C.W., Amsden, A.A., Cook, J.L., An Arbitrary LagrangianEulerian Computing Method for All Flow Speeds. Journal of Computational Physics, 14, 227253, (1974). [14] Huerta, A., Liu, W.K., Viscous Flow Structure Interaction. Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology, 110, 1521, (1988). [15] Huerta, A., Liu, W.K., Viscous Flow with Large Free Surface Motion. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 69, 277324, (1988). [16] Hughes, T.J.R., Franca, L.P., Balestra, M., A New Finite Element Formulation for Computational Fluid Dynamics: V. Circumventing the BabuskaBrezzi Condition: A Stable Petrov Galerkin Formulation of the Stokes Problem accommodating equalorder Interpolation. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 59, 8599, (1986).

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[17] Hughes, T.J.R., Liu, W.K., Zimmermann, T.K., LagrangianEulerian Finite Element Formulation for Viscous Flows. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 29, 329349, (1981). [18] Johnson, A.A., Tezduyar, T.E., Mesh update strategies in parallel finite element computations of flow problems with moving boundaries and interfaces. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 119, 7394, (1994). [19] Masud, A., A SpaceTime Finite Element Method for FluidStructure Interaction. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Civil Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, (1993). [20] Mittal, S., Tezduyar, T.E., Massively parallel finite element computation of incompressible flows involving fluidbody interactions. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 112, 253282, (1994). [21] Nomura, T., Hughes, T.J.R., An Arbitrary LagrangianEulerian Finite Element Method for Interaction of Fluid and a Rigid Body. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 95, 115138, (1992). [22] Park, K.C., Felippa, C.A., Partitioned Analysis of Coupled Systems. Computational Methods for Transient Analysis, T. Belytschko and T.J.R. Hughes (eds.), Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., 157219, (1983). [23] Pedley, T.J., Stephanoff, K.D., Flow along a channel with a timedependent indentation in one wall: the generation of vorticity waves. J. Fluid Mech., 160, 337367, (1985). [24] Ralph, M.E., Pedley, T.J., Flow in a Channel with a Moving Indentation. J. Fluid Mech., 190, 87112, (1988). [25] Tezduyar, T.E., Aliabadi, S., Behr, M., Johnson, A., Kalro, V., Litke, M., Flow Simulations and High Performance Computing. AHPCRC Preprint 96031, University of Minnesota, (1996). [26] Tezduyar, T.E., Behr, M., Liou, J., A new strategy for finite element computations involving moving boundaries and interfaces The deformingspatialdomain/spacetime procedure: I. The concept and the preliminary numerical tests. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 94, 339351, (1992). [27] Wall, W.A., FluidStruktur Interaktion mit stabilisierten Finiten Elementen. Ph.D. Thesis, Institute of Structural Mechanics, University of Stuttgart. to be published, (1998). [28] Watanabe, S., Hirano, H., Kawahara, M., A FluidStructure Interaction Analysis by ALE Finite Element Method. Numerical Methods in Engineering 96, Proc. of ECCOMAS 96, Paris, France. Dsidri et al. (eds.), J. Wiley & Sons, 894897, (1996).
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