FSI for rotating Helicopter main rotor blades using OpenFoam v12 and MbDyn

Official adapters and tutorials
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Dear preCICE community,

I’m trying to conduct FSI for rotating Helicopter main rotor blades. which I’m trying to do is a 3D simulation. Allowing 3DoF and rotating bodies at the same time is not possible in openFoam. Therefore, I’ve found some research works combining MbDyn and openFoam.

Currently, I’m facing few issues;

  1. Major issue is with installing MbDyn software. I’m using 20.04 LTS, codename focal and openFoam V12. I tried using preCICE v2. as well as preCICE v3 to install the MbDyn. But still I was unable to install it successfully.
  2. How to match the mesh. Because this is a 3D mesh and I have to use snappyHexMesh for openFoam (fluid) and do i need to make another mesh for fea(solid). If so, how do I match the two meshes because it is obvious that the nodes are not going to match with each other.

Need help to solve these issues!

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Hi @Nipuna_Perera

my apologies for the delay in the answer. A lot of topics here:

  • Regarding MBdyn installation, you can probably look here: MBDyn | MBDyn Website
  • Regarding the mesh, in a nutshell, in MBDyn, you can define a mapping between a cloud of external points (which will become the “solid mesh”) and the nodes of your model, so that the rotation and translation of your rotor are smoothly converted into the wet surface motion. This has to be set up when you configure your model.
    I hope this helps a bit
    Claudio
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