A conservative coupling method for fluid-structure interaction in the compressible case

Abstract

We propose a general explicit coupling method between a Finite Volume method for compressible flow and a rigid body. The coupling strategy is based on the idea of Embedded Boundary methods (Pember et al., J. Comput. Phys. 120:278-304, 1995). The fluxes are computed everywhere in the Cartesian grid, and are modified at the solid boundaries to enforce fluid mass conservation. The coupling between the fluid and the solid is designed to ensure a balance in momentum and energy. We prove the exact numerical conservation of several simple uniform flows. An illustrative example of the liftoff of a cylinder by a shock wave is presented and compared with existing results. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.