Structural Vibration of an Elastically Supported Plate due to Excitation of a Turbulent Boundary Layer 2019-01-1470

High-Reynolds number turbulent boundary layers are an important source for inducing structural vibration. Small geometric features of a structure can generate significant turbulence that result in structural vibration. In this work we develop a new method to couple a high-fidelity fluid solver with a dynamic hybrid finite element formulation for the structure. The flow solver is based on the OpenFOAM open source CFD toolkit. The fluid solver uses the Large-Eddy Simulation closure for the unresolved turbulence. Specifically, a local and dynamic one-equation eddy viscosity model is employed. The fluid pressure fluctuation on the structure is mapped to the dynamic structural model. The plate where the flow excitation is applied is considered as part of a larger structure. A hybrid approach based on the Component Mode Synthesis (CMS) is used for developing the new hybrid formulation. The dynamic behavior of the plate which is excited by the flow is modeled using finite elements. However, the rest of the surrounding structure is modeled using finite elements for the static modes and an analytical solution for the dynamic modes of the CMS decomposition. The two main elements of the new work, the hybrid structural formulation and the process of applying the fluid load from OpenFOAM on the structural dynamic model are discussed. Validation of the new methodology is done by using test data from the literature for the vibration of plates excited by air flow, and through comparisons between the new methodology and traditional finite element based solutions.