On the coupling between fluid flow and mesh motion in the modelling of fluid–structure interaction

Partitioned Newton type solution strategies for the strongly coupled system of equations arising in the computational modelling of fluid–solid interaction require the evaluation of various coupling terms. An essential part of all ALE type solution strategies is the fluid mesh motion. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the terms which couple the fluid flow with the fluid mesh motion on the convergence behaviour of the overall solution procedure. We show that the computational efficiency of the simulation of many fluid–solid interaction processes, including fluid flow through flexible pipes, can be increased significantly if some of these coupling terms are calculated exactly.