Computational Study of Interaction of an Elastic Plate with Laminar Flow Involving Large-scale Flow-induced Deformation

An in-house fluid-structure interaction (FSI) solver has been benchmarked and employed for simulating a thin, elastic plate undergoing large-scale deformation in laminar flow. The solver couples a sharp-interface Immersed Boundary Method (IBM) for the fluid dynamics with an open-source finite-element method to treat the structural dynamics. Four different configurations of fluid-induced oscillations of an elastic plate in laminar flow are investigated to understand the plate dynamics. The largest oscillations of the elastic plate are observed at lock-in condition. Flow-induced deformation of the elastic plate has important applications in the areas of energy harvesting and heat transfer enhancement.