An immersed boundary method based fluid-structure interaction solver with applications in energy harvesting

Abstract

We present the development of an in-house fluid-structure interaction (FSI) solver and employ the solver for state-of-the-art applications in energy harvesting. An implicit partitioned approach is utilized to couple a sharp-interface immersed boundary method based flow solver and a finite-element method based structural solver. The code validations are presented for large-scale flow-induced deformation and vortex-induced vibration of an elastically mounted circular cylinder. We employ the FSI solver for analysis of vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of a cylinders, with different cross-sections. The suppression and agitation of VIV for different cylinders are discussed along with lock-in characteristics. An energy harvesting model is utilized to estimate the power generated per unit mass and it was found that the galloping of the D-cylinder is useful for broadband energy harvesting for a wide range of reduced velocities.