Performance of a new partitioned procedure versus a monolithic procedure in fluid-structure interaction

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) can be simulated in a monolithic way by solving the flow and structural equations simultaneously and in a partitioned way with separate solvers for the flow equations and the structural equations. A partitioned quasi-Newton technique which solves the coupled problem through nonlinear equations corresponding to the interface position is presented and its performance is compared with a monolithic Newton algorithm. Various structural configurations with an incompressible fluid are solved, and the ratio of the time for the partitioned simulation, when convergence is reached, to the time for the monolithic simulation is found to be between 1/2 and 4. However. in this comparison of the partitioned and monolithic simulations, the flow and structural equations have been solved with a direct sparse solver in full Newton-Raphson iterations, only relatively small problems have been solved and this ratio would likely change if large industrial problems were considered or if other solution strategies were used. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.