Fluid–structure interaction for aeroelastic applications

The interaction between a flexible structure and the surrounding fluid gives rise to a variety of phenomena with applications in many areas, such as, stability analysis of airplane wings, turbomachinery design, design of bridges, and the flow of blood through arteries. Studying these phenomena requires modeling of both fluid and structure. Many approaches in computational aeroelasticity seek to synthesize independent computational approaches for the aerodynamic and the structural dynamic subsystems. This strategy is known to be fraught with complications associated with the interaction between the two simulation modules. The task is to choosing the appropriate models for fluid and structure based on the application, and to develop an efficient interface to couple the two models. In the present article, we review the recent advancements in the field of fluid–structure interaction, with specific attention to aeroelastic applications. One of the key aspects to developing a robust coupled aeroelastic model is the presence of an efficient moving grid technique to account for structural deformations. Several such techniques are reviewed in this paper. Also, the time scales associated with fluid–structure interaction problems can be very different; hence, appropriate time stepping strategies and/or sub-cycling procedures within the individual field need to be devised. The flutter predictions performed on an AGARD 445.6 wing at different Mach numbers are selected to highlight the state-of-the-art computational and modeling issues.