Towards the Virtual Wind Tunnel for civil engineering applications

This monograph develops a numerical tool (the Virtual Wind Tunnel, VWT) for the
reso-lution of problems involving fluid flow around structures. Due to the limitations
that traditional methods may have in this context, the VWT is based on the use of fixed
mesh technologies (CutFEM-type) combined with an implicit representation of the
embedded bodies.
One of the main contributions of the monograph is the use of such fixed mesh methods to
solve lightweight thin-walled structures problems. Hence, two embedded formulations
capable of representing the flow around bodies with and without internal volume are
proposed. The first one results in a simpler implementation and lower computational
effort but can only represent a slip behavior of the wall. The second one gets rid of such
limitation by including a Nitsche imposition of the Navier-slip condition, thus allowing
modelling any wall behavior as a wall law would do.
The applicability range of the VWT includes the fluid–structure i nteraction problem
(FSI). To that purpose an improvement for the boundary condition imposition of the
FM-ALE algorithm mesh motion problem is also proposed. Moreover, the implementation,
which has been conceived to be easily extended to any other coupled problem, is
also treated.
The validation of the technologies within the VWT includes multiple theoretical test
cases as well as feasible industrial applications. Among these, the FSI analysis of a
4-point tent during a strong wind episode deserves to be highlighted as it showcases the
achievement of the initial objective of the monograph.