Section: Research Program

Numerical analysis and simulation of heterogeneous systems

Within the team, we have developed in the last few years numerical codes for the simulation of FSIS and CWS. We plan to continue our efforts in this direction.

• In the case of FSIS, our main objective is to provide computational tools for the scientific community, essentially to solve academic problems.

• In the case of CWS, our main objective is to build tools general enough to handle industrial problems. Our strong collaboration with Christophe Geuzaine's team in Liège (Belgium) makes this objective credible, through the combination of DDM (Domain Decomposition Methods) and parallel computing.

Below, we explain in detail the corresponding scientific program.

• Simulation of FSIS: In order to simulate fluid-structure systems, one has to deal with the fact that the fluid domain is moving and that the two systems for the fluid and for the structure are strongly coupled. To overcome this free boundary problem, three main families of methods are usually applied to numerically compute in an efficient way the solutions of the fluid-structure interaction systems. The first method consists in suitably displacing the mesh of the fluid domain in order to follow the displacement and the deformation of the structure. A classical method based on this idea is the A.L.E. (Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian) method: with such a procedure, it is possible to keep a good precision at the interface between the fluid and the structure. However, such methods are difficult to apply for large displacements (typically the motion of rigid bodies). The second family of methods consists in using a fixed mesh for both the fluid and the structure and to simultaneously compute the velocity field of the fluid with the displacement velocity of the structure. The presence of the structure is taken into account through the numerical scheme. Finally, the third class of methods consists in transforming the set of PDEs governing the flow into a system of integral equations set on the boundary of the immersed structure. The members of SPHINX have already worked on these three families of numerical methods for FSIS systems with rigid bodies (see e.g. [109], [96], [111], [107], [108], [101]).

• Simulation of CWS: Solving acoustic or electromagnetic scattering problems can become a tremendously hard task in some specific situations. In the high frequency regime (i.e. for small wavelength), acoustic (Helmholtz's equation) or electromagnetic (Maxwell's equations) scattering problems are known to be difficult to solve while being crucial for industrial applications (e.g. in aeronautics and aerospace engineering). Our particularity is to develop new numerical methods based on the hybridization of standard numerical techniques (like algebraic preconditioners, etc.) with approaches borrowed from asymptotic microlocal analysis. Most particularly, we contribute to building hybrid algebraic/analytical preconditioners and quasi-optimal Domain Decomposition Methods (DDM) [63], [80], [81] for highly indefinite linear systems. Corresponding three-dimensional solvers (like for example GetDDM) will be developed and tested on realistic configurations (e.g. submarines, complete or parts of an aircraft, etc.) provided by industrial partners (Thales, Airbus). Another situation where scattering problems can be hard to solve is the one of dense multiple (acoustic, electromagnetic or elastic) scattering media. Computing waves in such media requires us to take into account not only the interactions between the incident wave and the scatterers, but also the effects of the interactions between the scatterers themselves. When the number of scatterers is very large (and possibly at high frequency [58], [57]), specific deterministic or stochastic numerical methods and algorithms are needed. We introduce new optimized numerical methods for solving such complex configurations. Many applications are related to this problem e.g. for osteoporosis diagnosis where quantitative ultrasound is a recent and promising technique to detect a risk of fracture. Therefore, numerical simulation of wave propagation in multiple scattering elastic media in the high frequency regime is a very useful tool for this purpose.