The figure shows the deflection of an elastic beam in a viscous incompressible flow with Reynolds number Re=100. The flow direction is indicated by the arrows and the flow rate by the color of the arrows (blue means slow and red fast). The flow pressure is indicated by the color of the level curves (blue means small and red high pressure).

The fluid flow was modeled by the incompressible steady state Navier-Stokes equations. The deflection of the beam was determined from the full non-linear elasticity equations. The equations were linearized and solved by Newton's method and stabilized biquadratic finite elements. The coupled system was solved by the method of sequential iteration.