Application of the Finite-Volume Method to Fluid-Structure Interaction Analysis

This paper describes the development of an integrated finite-volume (FV) technique for the numerical simulation of unsteady, turbulent, fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in internal flow systems. Specifically, the case of turbulent flow through a compliant walled aneurysm has been used as a test case to illustrate the method and the resulting predictions are shown to be in good agreement with published numerical data. The accurate and efficient simulation of such flows can provide useful information for an important category of physiological flows and can potentially be used to develop future treatments. The FSI simulations have been preceded by computations of steady and unsteady turbulent flow through rigid walled aneurysms of varying geometry, in order to ensure that the turbulence model used is suitable for this type of flow. This FSI solver has been developed by coupling an existing CFD code to a FV based stress analysis code, especially developed for this purpose. The FV approach is preferred because it is the approachwidely adopted for the simulation of turbulent flows and the integrated, all-in-one approach is chosen because of its superior efficiency in time-dependent simulations. The stress analysis code solves a discretized form of the unsteady elasticity equations, written in terms of displacement, using the FV method