Abstract
This paper presents a fully coupled three‐dimensional solver for the analysis of time‐dependent fluid–structure interaction. A partitioned time‐marching algorithm is employed for the solution to the time‐dependent coupled discretized problem, thus enabling the use of highly developed, robust and well‐tested solvers for each field. Coupling of the fields is achieved through a conservative transfer of information at the fluid–structure interface. An implicit coupling is achieved when the solutions to the fluid and structure subproblems are cycled at each time step until convergence is reached. The three‐dimensional unsteady incompressible fluid is solved using a powerful implicit dual time‐stepping technique with an explicit multistage Runga–Kutta time stepping in pseudo‐time and arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian formulation for the moving boundaries. A finite element dynamic analysis of the highly deformable structure is carried out with a numerical strategy combining the implicit Newmark time integration algorithm with a Newton–Raphson second‐order optimization method. Various test cases are presented for benchmarking and to demonstrate the potential applications of this method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.