Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation for fluid-rigid body interaction

A new formulation for two-dimensional fluid rigid body interaction problems is developed. In particular, vortex-induced oscillations of a rigid body i n viscous incompressible Row are studied. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are used to describe the motion of the fluid, while it is assumed that the rigid bod) is mounted on a system consisting of a spring and a da shpot. An arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation (ALE) is used in order to account for large boundary motion. A general formulation for the coupled problem is obtained by uncoupling the translation motion of the body from its rotational motion and developing a specific algorithm to efficiently ha ndle the nonlinear dependence of the rotations. This general formulation ca n be easily applied to multi-body problems. Two numerical examples involvin g either translations and rotations are presented as an illustration of the proposed methodologies for fluid-rigid body interaction. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.