Fully Coupled, Higher-Order, Block-Structured Mesh Generation in Fluid–Structure Interaction

Abstract

In fluid–structure interaction (FSI), a fluid flow and a deforming solid are coupled along a time-dependent and moving interface. The change in the fluid domain requires an update of the related mesh. Herein, we propose to use a higher-order block-structured mesh generation approach, where a new mesh is generated (rather than updated) in every time step, taking the deformed FSI-interface into account. The mesh generation is based on a block-structure, consisting of coarse, linear quads, and transfinite maps to generate sub-meshes inside the block-structure, of any desired number and order of elements. The approach presented herein enables high-quality meshes throughout the simulation. The selection of the block-structure is crucial and leads to a very robust method. The performance of the mesh generation approach is confirmed through numerical results.