Analysis and optimization of flow around flexible wings and blades using the standard co-simulation interface MpCCI

Certain applications require the concurrent consideration (and thus simulation) of phenomena from different physical disciplines, e.g., the fluid-structure interactions (FSI) where the flow has significant influence to the deformable boundary structure and vice versa. In this article, the co-simulation software MpCCI is described. It provides flexible algorithms and interfaces to couple different commercial and open-source software packages in order to solve multi-disciplinary simulation tasks. The capabilities in the area of FSI are shown in four distinct experiments. The MpCCI software package offers, on the one hand, a bi-directional coupling environment where specialized simulation tools from different software vendors can be combined at run-time. Moreover, MpCCI provides a file-based uni-directional data mapping. Both software products transfer data between not necessarily equal simulation discretizations. The underlying association and interpolation algorithms are described and the different bi-directional coupling strategies are explained. The results of an application of MpCCI in FSI problems are shown first in the HIRENASD benchmarks, which show good approximations to the measurements. Then a coupled simulation of a NACA airfoil is presented. The third example uses a fluid-structure coupling during a geometry optimization of an airfoil. The one-way mapping procedure is presented for the simulation of flow-induced vibrations of turbomachinery rotor blades.