A Study of Fluid Sloshing in a Cylindrical Fuel Tank with Use of a Laser Scanning System to Capture Fluid Motion and Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian Analysis for Simulation

Abstract

A study was conducted to gain a better understanding of fluid structure-interaction when fuel sloshes inside a cylindrical tank. The study involved building a test fixture to create sinusoidal motion which induced sloshing inside a partial fuel tank section. Strain gauges were installed on the tubing inside the tank that was used to draw and return fluid from and to the tank. A multi-camera video capture system was used to record fluid motion which was illuminated using a grating of laser lines arranged in an alternating color pattern. A software program was developed to convert the captured video into 3D data representing the free surface of the fluid. A finite element model was created and a coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian analysis was performed to recreate the test conditions in simulation. When the results of the test and simulation were compared, the fluid motion was found to match favorably. However, the strain time history recorded from the test, when compared with that of the simulation, was found to have less favorable correlation. Possible sources of the discrepancy are discussed and potential improvements are proposed which may improve the correlation of the simulation to the test.