A novel approach to study the wellposedness of the 3D fluid-2D plate interaction PDE System

We consider a certain fluid-structure interaction (FSI) system with a view of obtaining an alternative methodology for establishing its strongly continuous semigroup wellposedness. (Semigroup generation for this FSI was originally considered in Avalos-Clark (2014).) The FSI model under consideration describes the vibrations of an incompressible fluid within a 3D cavity as it interacts with the elastic membrane on the free" upper boundary of the cavity. Such coupled PDE systems appear in variety of natural settings such as biomedicine, aeroelasticity, and fluid dynamics. Our proof of $C_0$-semigroup wellposedness is based on a proper application of Lumer Phillips Theorem. In this regard, our main challenge is to show the maximality of the corresponding semigroup generator. To this end, we develop a nonstandard" inf-sup approach which avoids the use of technical nonlocal maps in the associated bilinear forms–unlike the earlier paper Avalos-Clark (2014)–and allows for the solution of the fluid and plate solution variables simultanously. Our new inf-sup strategy will lead to a more efficient mixed finite element method (FEM) for approximating solutions to the FSI problem, inasmuch our novel variational formulation avoids bilinear forms which are free from the computationally-intensive nonlocal solution operators invoked in Avalos-Clark (2014). We also perform numerical tests based on this formulation using a benchmark problem and present numerical results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.