Benchmarking the material point method for interaction problems between the free surface flow and elastic structure

Numerical simulation of fluid structure interaction (FSI) problems is a significant and interesting field in computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The material point method (MPM), a relatively novel particle-based method, is extended and benchmarked for simulating interactions between the free surface flow and elastic structure. In the MPM method, both the fluid and structure media are described by Lagrangian particles and the unified governing equations are solved in the Eulerian background mesh and the no-slip boundary condition between the fluid and structure can be satisfied automatically, which imply that the MPM method would be a promising scheme for FSI problems. Three validated test cases are presented. The first one is oil flow in a sloshing tank interacting with an elastic bar, and the second test case is water dam-break flow through an elastic gate, and the last one is water dam-break flow past an elastic obstacle. The results obtained by the MPM method are in good agreement with published experimental results and other numerical simulations, which confirm that the MPM method is a promising and effective numerical algorithm for FSI problems involving the free surface flow.