Fluid–shell structure interaction analysis by coupled particle and finite element method

This paper presents a coupled particle and finite element method for fluid–shell structure interaction analysis. The Moving Particle Semi-Implicit (MPS) method is used to analyze fluid flow and the MITC4 shell element is used in the FEM analysis of the structure. This paper considers partitioned coupling between the fluid and structural solvers. In order to satisfy compatibility in the employed partitioned coupling scheme, the Neumann–Dirichlet condition is applied to both the fluid and the structure. A symplectic time integration scheme is used to preserve energy when analyzing the shell structure. If the frequencies of the shell analysis are much higher than those of the MPS fluid solver, its time integration scheme is sub-cycled. When the presented coupling scheme was applied to simulate the sloshing phenomenon in an elastic thin shell structure, fluid fragmentation and large structural deformations were observed.