Simulation of the dynamics of an elastic membrane in a grooved channel using a combined lattice Boltzmann-immersed boundary method

In the current study, the motion and deformation of an elastic membrane in a two-dimensional channel with and without a groove is simulated using a combined lattice Boltzmann-immersed boundary method. The lattice Boltzmann method is used to solve the fluid flow equations and the immersed boundary method is used to incorporate the fluid-membrane interaction. The elastic membrane is considered as a flexible boundary immersed in the flow domain. In the immersed boundary method, the membrane is represented in the Lagrangian coordinates while the fluid domain is discretized on a uniform fixed Eulerian grid. The interaction between the fluid and the membrane is modeled using Dirac delta function. The effects of no-slip boundary condition are enforced by addition of a forcing term to the lattice Boltzmann equation. Depending on the flow rate, the initial location and stiffness of the elastic membrane, the size of the groove, the membrane only rotates inside the groove or the flow moves it out of the groove. The results are presented in terms of flow velocity and pressure fields and membrane configuration at different times. Comparison between the present results and the available numerical and experimental ones shows good agreement between them.