Novel Finite Element Formulations For Dynamics Of Acoustic Fluids

Abstract

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) as the name suggests, is the study of dynamic interaction of both fluid and structure motions. Fluid-structure interaction exists in almost all engineering and science fields. Moreover, the random loading caused by fluid motions in uncertain environment conditions present new challenges to the designers. The objective of the present research work is to develop efficient and robust finite element models to solve fluid structure interaction problems effectively. A key advantage of the displacement based FE M is the flexibility and easiness in modifying the existing efficient numerical solvers, and can also be extended easily to a number of problems. The research work carried out in this thesis can be divided into three parts. In the first part, development of displacement based Lagrangian FE models for acoustic fluids is presented. Here, the displacement fields of the 2-D and 3-DFEs are derived based on the consistently assumed constrained strain fields satisfying irrotationality and incompressibility constraints simultaneously. These elements’ behaviour, in terms of number of zero energy modes, non-zero spurious modes, and the integration order is studied. The inf-sup test is carried out on all the elements to examine the performance of each formulated element. Next, a new class of FEs based on Legendre polynomials is presented. The node point locations in this case are obtained by calculating the zero’s of equation(1- ξ2)L’n(ξ) =0,where,Ln is the Legendre polynomial of order n in one dimension. In the second part, the development of a spectral layer element for studying wave propagation in acoustic fluids is presented. Laplace transform based spectral finite element formulation is developed for studying acoustic wave propagation. The partial differential equations(PDE)are converted to ordinary differential equations(ODE) by taking Laplace transform. The Laplace damping parameter is introduced for easy handling of the numerical Laplace transform(NLT).This Laplace damping parameter removes the “wraparound”problem which is present in shortwave guides due to periodicity of the Fourier transform. Later, a technique is developed through which SFEM stiffness matrix can be added to the FEM dynamic stiffness matrix in the frequency domain. Finally, Uncertainty analysis is carried out to understand the effect of randomness in the design parameters on the system response variability. Here, standard uncertainty analysis procedure called Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) is considered first and later Polynomial chaos expansion(PCE). In this analysis, the gravitational forces, bulk modulus of the fluid, and Young’s modulus of the structure are considered as random input variables in the study. The randomness in the system output is measured in terms of coefficient of variation for each random variable considered.