Thermal fluid-structure interaction by discontinuous Galerkin methods

This research study presents a novel high-order accurate computational framework for thermal fluid-structure interaction problems. The framework is based on the use of blockstructured Cartesian grids where level set functions are employed to define both the fluid and the solid regions. This leads to a mesh that consists of a collection of standard d-dimensional rectangular elements and a relatively smaller number of irregular elements at the fluid-solid interface. The embedded boundaries are resolved with high-order accuracy thanks to the use of high-order accurate quadrature rules for implicitly-defined regions. The fluid is assumed compressible and governed by the inviscid Navier-Stokes equations, whilst the solid region obeys the equations of thermo-elasticity within the small-strain regime. Numerical examples are provided to assess the capability of the proposed approach.