A Comparison of Strong and Weak Coupling Schemes for Computational Aeroelasticity in OpenFOAM

Abstract

Two coupling schemes for fluid-structure interaction using the OpenFOAM structural solver sixDoF Rigid Body Motion are developed. The first scheme is developed by modifying the baseline leapfrog weak coupling scheme to minimize the lag between the fluid and structural solvers. The second is a strong coupling scheme based on the Crank-Nicolson method. The two newly implemented schemes and the baseline are compared through the aeroelastic simulation of a NACA 64A010 airfoil and the Benchmark Supercritical Wing. The aeroelastic solutions obtained using the newly implemented schemes exhibit significantly lower sensitivity to changes in time step size compared to the baseline weak coupling scheme. The modified weak coupling and strong coupling schemes perform comparably for the cases studied.