Announcement Detail

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

2:00 PM EDT

Join via Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82464478256?pwd=ZMkJVFdjMJzadgnVWFPqsdUSs4qTaY.1

Student Chapter Seminar Series

Simulating Contact-Rich Fluid-Structure Interaction Problems

Speaker

Teo Lara, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abstract

Predicting how soft bodies collide, slide, and deform while immersed in a fluid is challenging: solid mechanics, fluid dynamics, and contact must be resolved simultaneously. This talk will focus on a general simulation approach for fluid-solid interaction problems based on the fully Eulerian reference map technique. Its single unified velocity field and levelset field yield an efficient formulation that can robustly handle self- and multi-body contacts for arbitrary deformable solids immersed in a Navier-Stokes fluid. We extend this framework to include frictional contacts and solid actuation, enabling simulations of many submerged, soft, active swimmers interacting through both fluid and contact forces. The method converges to the Hertzian solution for two tangentially shearing disks, and captures contact-rich dynamics in several test cases including a block sliding down a ramp, a disk rotating in a rigid hoop, and multiple deformable bodies in a fluid settling under gravity or driven by neighboring solids, all while undergoing simultaneous self-contact and friction. Together, these results establish the reference map technique as a practical Eulerian framework for modeling contacts in deformable fluid-structure interaction problems.

Bio

Teo Lara recently completed his undergraduate studies at MIT with a BS in mathematics and physics. His research focuses on developing computational methods for fluid-structure interaction problems with applications to biological systems. Under Professor Ken Kamrin, he built Eulerian simulation techniques for resolving frictional contacts between soft bodies immersed in a fluid. With Professor Jörn Dunkel, he has been studying the feeding and swimming dynamics of jellyfish, connecting vortex structures to energetic tradeoffs in prey capture. This fall, Teo will begin his postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, continuing to study applied mathematics in biological contexts.