Partitioned semi-implicit methods for simulation of biomechanical fluid-structure interaction problems

This paper represents numerical simulation of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) system involving an incompressible viscous fluid and a lightweight elastic structure. We follow a semi-implicit approach in which we implicitly couple the added-mass term (pressure stress) of the fluid to the structure, while other terms are coupled explicitly. This significantly reduces the computational cost of the simulations while showing adequate stability. Several coupling schemes are tested including fixed-point method with different static and dynamic relaxation, as well as Newton-Krylov method with approximated Jacobian. Numerical tests are conducted in the context of a biomechanical problem. Results indicate that the Newton-Krylov solver outperforms fixed point ones while introducing more complexity to the problem due to the evaluation of the Jacobian. Fixed-point solver with Aitken’s relaxation method also proved to be a simple, yet efficient method for FSI simulations.