Abstract
In the early stages of dynamic simulations, significant effort was devoted to the development of efficient numerical methods, and Fluid Structure Interaction domain made no exception to that rule. As a matter of fact, due to limited computational capacities, great care was taken to only include significant parts of simulated structures. One consequence was that the non-structural parts - thereby including fluid domain- were systematically condensed into structurally equivalent mass, stiffness or damping. Among those methods, a series of seminal papers (Au-Yang, 1976 and Au-Yang 1981) were devoted to the coupling of coaxial shells. While the proposed method was perfectly suited to line (beam-type) models, it does not apply to the nowadays widely used surface type (plate or shell) models. Necessary developments have been made by the authors, and the results favorably benchmarked with those obtained using other rigorous but computationally intensive approaches. Therefore, the proposed method is felt to be a very valuable alternative for industrial practice. The approach does not require specific development, since it only uses generic capabilities of structural Finite Element packages. It can also be used as a reference for verification of complex, multi-physics numerical packages. Although primarily aimed at simulating the internal structure of Pressurized Water Reactor, the proposed method can be applied to any immersed fluid coupled coaxial shells.
