A partition method for the solution of a coupled liquid-structure interaction problem

A numerical code is presented to study the motion of an incompressible inviscid flow in a deformable tank. It is based on a method belonging to the partition treatment class, as the fluid and structural fields are solved by coupling two distinct models. The fluid field is modeled by the Laplace equation and numerically solved by a Finite Volume technique. The computational grid is updated at each time step to take into account the movements of the free surface and the deformations of the vertical walls. An unsteady finite element formulation is used for modeling the tank on a grid discretized by triangular elements and linear shape functions. Results are presented for two different cases: a flow induced by a perturbation on the free surface in a tank motionless; a flow in a tank forced to oscillate periodically in the horizontal direction. (C) 2004 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.