Hydro-structure coupling of CFD and FEM - Quasi-static approach

The present article deals with the coupling of hydrodynamic loading, modelled by OpenFOAM Finite Volume (FV) framework for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and the structural response, modelled by the general 3D Finite Element (FE) approach. The overall methodology and the numerical approaches which are discussed are very general and remain valid for any type of hydro-structure interaction problems, but here the main concern is on marine structures (ships, off-shore platforms ...) where the loading is induced by water waves. In the present work, the accent is placed on the linear quasi static structural response which is the problem belonging to the one-way coupling procedures. Particularly, this means that the hydrodynamic and structural simulations can be performed independently of each other. The main technical issue becomes the consistent transfer of the hydrodynamic loads from the hydrodynamic CFD mesh to the structural FE mesh. This paper presents a novel methodology of the load transfer based on the projection method for the specific application to FV hydrodynamic and FE structural coupling. Validation tests are performed on a simple fixed vertical cylinder in presence of waves and on a more practical case of container ship in large waves demonstrating the robustness and accuracy of the method.