This article discusses contemporary strategies to deal with immersed boundary (IB) frameworks useful for analyzing flow–structure interaction in complex settings. It focuses on immense advancements in various fields: biology, oscillation of structures due to fluid flow, deformable materials, thermal processes, settling particles, multiphase systems, and sound propagation. The discussion also involves a review of techniques addressing moving boundary conditions at complex interfaces. Evaluating practical examples and theoretical challenges that have been addressed by these frameworks are another focus of the article. Important results highlight the integration of IB methods with adaptive mesh refinement and high-order accuracy techniques, which enormously improve computational efficiency and precision in modeling complex solid–fluid interactions. The article also describes the evolution of IB methodologies in tackling problems of energy harvesting, bio-inspiration propulsion, and thermal-fluid coupling, which extends IB methodologies broadly in many scientific and industrial areas. More importantly, by bringing together different insights and paradigms from across disciplines, the study highlights the emerging trends in IB methodologies towards solving some of the most intricate challenges within the technical and scientific domains.
Kanchan et al. (2025) studied this question.