Immersed Boundary Methods for Simulating Fluid-Structure Interaction

Fluid–structure interaction (FSI) problems commonly encountered in engineering, environmental and biological applications involve geometrically complex flexible or rigid bodies undergoing large deformations. Immersed boundary (IB) methods have emerged as a powerful simulation tool for tackling such flows due to their inherent ability to handle arbitrarily complex bodies without the need for expensive and cumbersome dynamic re-meshing strategies. Depending on the approach such methods adopt to satisfy boundary conditions on solid surfaces they can be broadly classified as diffused and sharp interface methods. In this talk I will outline a powerful sharp-interface IB computational framework we have developed in my group for simulating complex FSI problems encountered in a broad range of applications in engineering and biology. I  will demonstrate the capabilities of the method by presenting simulation results from various problems, including vortex-induced vibrations, aquatic swimming, cardiovascular fluid mechanics, river flows over mobile sediment beds, and wind and marine and hydrokinetic energy.