Development of an integrated BEM for hot fluid-structure interaction

A boundary element approach is developed for problems of hot fluid-structure interaction. The structure is idealized as a thermoelastic solid, and a time-domain, boundary-only integral formulation is described. Meanwhile, several approaches are discussed for the hot fluid. Integral equations are developed for both compressible and incompressible thermoviscous flow. Due to the presence of non-linear convective terms in the governing differential equations, domain discretization is generally required. However, with the introduction of reference velocities, volume modeling often can be confined to regions near obstacles and walls. All formulations are implemented for two-dimensional problems in GP-BEST, a general purpose boundary element computer program. An overview of this numerical implementation is provided, along with several illustrative examples. The present fluid formulations are appropriate in the low to medium Reynolds number ranges, however, some enhancements required for higher speed simulations are noted.