Coupling finite elements and finite volumes by Lagrange multipliers for explicit dynamic fluid-structure interaction

This paper proposes a strategy for coupling a Finite Element description of structures with a Finite Volume (FV) description of fluids by means of the Lagrange multipliers method, for the numerical simulation of Fluid-Structure Interaction problems in fast transient dynamics. The structural domain uses the classical explicit Central Difference (CD) time integration scheme, while in the fluid domain a node-centered Finite Volume scheme is adopted, which achieves second-order accuracy in space and in time by a predictor-corrector algorithm combined with a MUSCL-like technique. The FV time marching scheme is suitably adapted to enable 'strong' coupling with the CD scheme via Lagrange multipliers. Numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed procedure. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.