A lattice Boltzmann model for multiphase flows interacting with deformable bodies

In this paper, a numerical model to simulate a multiphase flow interacting with deformable solid bodies is proposed. The fluid domain is modeled through the lattice Boltzmann method and the Shan-Chen model is adopted to handle the multiphase feature. The interaction of the flow with immersed solid bodies is accounted for by using the Immersed Boundary method. Corotational beam finite elements are used to model the deformable bodies and non-linear structure dynamics is predicted through the Time Discontinuous Galerkin method. A numerical campaign is carried out in order to assess the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed modeling by involving different scenarios. In particular, the model is validated by performing the bubble test and by comparing present results with the ones from a numerical commercial software. Moreover, the properties in terms of convergence are discussed. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed methodology is evaluated by computing the error in terms of the energy that is artificially introduced in the system at the fluid-solid interface. Present findings show that the proposed approach is robust, accurate and suitable of being applied to a lot of practical applications involving the interaction between multiphase flows and deformable solid bodies. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.