Catherine Ramirez Villalba awarded a PhD in fluid mechanics

At the end of November, Syroco’s fluid-structure interaction and numerical simulation expert, our very own Catherine Ramirez Villalba, defended her PhD at the LHEAA  - the Research Laboratory in Hydrodynamics, Energetics and Atmospheric Environment at Centrale Nantes. 

The LHEAA is a CNRS mixed research unit, tasked with both advancing theoretical knowledge and resolving concrete problems around four scientific themes: free-surface hydrodynamics, fluid-structure interactions, dynamics of the atmosphere and systems approach for ground and marine propulsion systems. 

The full Syroco team is super proud of Catherine’s achievement, and congratulates her warmly! 

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More details about Catherine’s research

The doctoral thesis, titled “Towards an efficient modeling of fluid-structure interaction” was defended in front of the committee that met on Zoom, given the sanitary circumstances. The committee was composed of: 

  • Chairman: Yannick Hoarau - Professeur, Université de Strasbourg
  • Examiners:
    • Elisabeth Longatte-Lacazedieu - Enseignant-chercheur, EPF Ecole d'Ingénieurs   
    • Yann Roux - CEO, K-Epsilon
    • Wulf Dettmer - Professor, Swansea University (reviewer)
    • Joris Degroote - Professor, Ghent University (reviewer)
  • PhD supervisor: Michel Visonneau - Research Director CNRS, LHEEA, Ecole Centrale de Nantes
  • Co-supervisor: Alban Leroyer - Assistant-professor, LHEEA, Ecole Centrale de Nantes
  • Guest: Corentin Lothode - Research Engineer CNRS, LMRS, Université de Rouen

Thesis abstract

FSI industrial applications are often described by complex geometries and materials. In order to accurately predict their behavior, high computational costs are associated, both in time and in computational resources. To improve the quality of the prediction without penalizing the computational time, and to reduce the computational time without impacting the accuracy that is available today, two main axes are explored in this work. The first one is the study of an asynchronous algorithm that could allow the use of complex structural models. The second axis consists of the study of the strip method while combining the use of a RANS model and a non-linear FEM model. On one hand, the study of asynchronicity in the FSI domain revealed different aspects of interest that must be addressed before the approach can be used industrially. However, a first treatment of the limitations found showed signs of an improvement that could lead to a promising algorithm, one that naturally lies between the implicit external algorithm and the implicit internal algorithm. On the other hand, it was shown that the strip method developed in this work achieves a significant reduction in calculation time while maintaining excellent accuracy.