This work presents a novel application of the hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) finite element method to the multi-physics simulation of coupled fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problems. Recent applications of the HDG method have primarily been for single-physics problems including both solids and fluids, which are necessary building blocks for FSI modeling. Utilizing these established models, HDG formulations for linear elastostatics, a nonlinear elastodynamic model, and arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian NavierStokes are derived. The elasticity formulations are written in a Lagrangian reference frame, with the nonlinear formulation restricted to hyperelastic materials. With these individual solid and fluid formulations, the remaining challenge in FSI modeling is coupling together their disparate mathematics on the fluid-solid interface. This coupling is presented, along with the resultant HDG FSI formulation. Verification of the component models, through the method of manufactured solutions, is performed and each model is shown to converge at the expected rate. The individual components, along with the complete FSI model, are then compared to the benchmark problems proposed by Turek and Hron [1]. The solutions from the HDG formulation presented in this work trend towards the benchmark as the spatial polynomial order and the temporal order of integration are increased.

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An overset grid methodology is developed for the fully coupled analysis of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) problems. The overset grid approach alleviates some of the computational geometry difficulties traditionally associated with Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) based, moving mesh methods for FSI. Our partitioned solution algorithm uses separate solvers for the fluid (finite volume method) and the structure (finite element method), with mesh motion computed only on a subset of component grids of our overset grid assembly. Our results indicate a significant reduction in computational cost for the mesh motion, and element quality is improved. Numerical studies of the benchmark test demonstrate the benefits of our overset mesh method over traditional approaches.

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The multi-physics simulation of coupled fluid-structure interaction problems, with disjoint fluid and solid domains, requires one to choose a method for enforcing the fluid-structure coupling at the interface between solid and fluid. While it is common knowledge that the choice of coupling technique can be very problem dependent, there exists no satisfactory coupling comparison methodology that allows for conclusions to be drawn with respect to the comparison of computational cost and solution accuracy for a given scenario. In this work, we develop a computational framework where all aspects of the computation can be held constant, save for the method in which the coupled nature of the fluid-structure equations is enforced. To enable a fair comparison of coupling methods, all simulations presented in this work are implemented within a single numerical framework within the deal.ii [1] finite element library. We have chosen the two-dimensional benchmark test problem of Turek and Hron [2] as an example to examine the relative accuracy of the coupling methods studied; however, the comparison technique is equally applicable to more complex problems. We show that for the specific case considered herein the monolithic approach outperforms partitioned and quasi-direct methods; however, this result is problem dependent and we discuss computational and modeling aspects which may affect other comparison studies.