Modelling and simulation of porous immersed boundaries

The immersed boundary method has been used to simulate a wide range of fluid-structure interaction problems from biology and engineering, wherein flexible solid structures deform in response to a surrounding incompressible fluid flow. We generalize the IB method to handle porous membranes by incorporating an additional transmembrane flux that obeys Darcy's law. An approximate analytical solution is derived that clearly illustrates the effect of porosity on the immersed boundary motion. Numerical simulations in two dimensions are used to validate the analytical results and to illustrate the motion of more general porous membrane dynamics. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.