Development of a coupling strategy between Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics and Finite Element Method for violent fluid-structure interaction problems

This paper focuses on a fluid-structure coupling applied to free surface flows through the use of a Lagrangian particle method and a classical meshed structure. We focus here on a coupling strategy between Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and Finite Element Method (FEM). On the fluid side, the SPH method is well adapted to model complex free surface flows. On the solid side, the classical FEM method is used for its accuracy and stability properties. In this work a weak coupling strategy is presented. The scheme can be used with any kind of SPH or FEM method and is relatively easy to implement. This paper highlights the use of implicit schemes for structure to preserve coupling stability and computational time. Interesting stability and computational efficiency properties will be also shown. Finally, coupling validations are performed and discussed on various 2D analytical and experimental test cases.