Validation of an immersed thick boundary method for simulating fluid-structure interactions of deformable membranes

This paper constitutes an extension of the work of Mendez et al. (2014) [36], for three-dimensional simulations of deformable membranes under flow. An immersed thick boundary method is used, combining the immersed boundary method with a three-dimensional modeling of the structural part. The immersed boundary method is adapted to unstructured grids for the fluid resolution, using the reproducing kernel particle method. An unstructured finite-volume flow solver for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is coupled with a finite-element solver for the structure. The validation process relying on a number of test cases proves the efficiency of the method, and its robustness is illustrated when computing the dynamics of a tri-leaflet aortic valve. The proposed immersed thick boundary method is able to tackle applications involving both thin and thick membranes/closed and open membranes, in significantly high Reynolds number flows and highly complex geometries.