Antoni Calderer

Level set immersed boundary method for coupled simulation of air/water interaction with complex floating structures

We propose a new computational approach for simulating the coupled interaction between air-water flows and arbitrarily complex floating rigid bodies. The numerical method integrates the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) curvilinear immersed boundary (CURVIB) method of Borazjani et al. (2008) 21 with a level set approach for simulating free surface flows in arbitrarily complex domains. We show that when applying the CURVIB method to simulate two-phase flow FSI problems the approach used to calculate the force imparted on the body is critical for determining the overall accuracy of the method. We develop and demonstrate the accuracy of a new approach for calculating the force, namely the pressure projection boundary condition (PPBC), which is based on projecting the pressure on the surface of the body using the momentum equation along the local normal to the body direction. Extensive numerical tests show that the new approach greatly improves the ability of the method to correctly predict the dynamics of the floating structure motion. To demonstrate the predictive capabilities of the method and its ability to simulate non-linear free surface phenomena, such as breaking waves, we apply it to various two- and three-dimensional problems involving complex rigid bodies interacting with a free surface both with prescribed body motion and coupled FSI. We show that for all cases the proposed method yields results in very good accuracy with benchmark numerical data and available experiments. The simulations also reveal the onset of dynamically rich, energetic coherent structures in the air phase induced by the waves generated as the rigid body interacts with the free surface.

Coupled fluid-structure interaction simulation of floating offshore wind turbines and waves: a large eddy simulation approach

We develop a computational framework for simulating the coupled interaction of complex floating structures with large-scale ocean waves and atmospheric turbulent winds. The near-field approach features a partitioned fluid-structure interaction model (FSI) combining the curvilinear immersed boundary (CURVIB) method of Borazjani and Sotiropoulos (J. Comput. Phys. 2008) and the two-phase flow level set formulation of Kang and Sotiropoulos (Adv. in Water Res. 2012) and is capable of solving complex free-surface flows interacting non-linearly with complex real life floating structures. The near-field solver is coupled with a large-scale wave and wind model based on the two-fluid approach of Yang and Shen (J. Comput. Phys. 2011) which integrates a viscous Navier-Stokes solver with undulatory boundaries for the motion of the air and an efficient potential-flow based wave solver. The large-scale turbulent wind is incorporated from the far-field solver to the near-field solver by feeding into the latter inlet boundary conditions. The wave field is incorporated to the near-field solver by using the pressure-forcing method of Guo and Shen (J. Comput. Phys. 2009) which has been appropriately adapted to the level set method. The algorithm for coupling the two codes has been validated for a variety of wave cases including a broadband spectrum showing excellent agreement when compared to theoretical results. Finally, the capabilities of the numerical framework are demonstrated by carrying out large eddy simulation (LES) of a floating wind turbine interacting with realistic ocean wind and wave conditions.

Fluid–structure interaction simulation of floating structures interacting with complex, large-scale ocean waves and atmospheric turbulence with application to floating offshore wind turbines

Abstract We develop a numerical method for simulating coupled interactions of complex floating structures with large-scale ocean waves and atmospheric turbulence. We employ an efficient large-scale model to develop offshore wind and wave environmental conditions, which are then incorporated into a high resolution two-phase flow solver with fluid–structure interaction (FSI). The large-scale wind–wave interaction model is based on a two-fluid dynamically-coupled approach that employs a high-order spectral method for simulating the water motion and a viscous solver with undulatory boundaries for the air motion. The two-phase flow FSI solver is based on the level set method and is capable of simulating the coupled dynamic interaction of arbitrarily complex bodies with airflow and waves. The large-scale wave field solver is coupled with the near-field FSI solver with a one-way coupling approach by feeding into the latter waves via a pressure-forcing method combined with the level set method. We validate the model for both simple wave trains and three-dimensional directional waves and compare the results with experimental and theoretical solutions. Finally, we demonstrate the capabilities of the new computational framework by carrying out large-eddy simulation of a floating offshore wind turbine interacting with realistic ocean wind and waves.