A full Eulerian finite difference approach for solving fluid–structure coupling problems

A new simulation method for solving fluid–structure coupling problems has been developed. All the basic equations are numerically solved on a fixed Cartesian grid using a finite difference scheme. A volume-of-fluid formulation [Hirt, Nichols, J. Comput. Phys. 39 (1981) 201], which has been widely used for multiphase flow simulations, is applied to describing the multi-component geometry. The temporal change in the solid deformation is described in the Eulerian frame by updating a left Cauchy-Green deformation tensor, which is used to express constitutive equations for nonlinear Mooney–Rivlin materials. In this paper, various verifications and validations of the present full Eulerian method, which solves the fluid and solid motions on a fixed grid, are demonstrated, and the numerical accuracy involved in the fluid–structure coupling problems is examined.