ALE FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF NONLINEAR SLOSHING PROBLEMS BASED ON F LUID VELOCITY POTENTIAL

Base d on fluid velocity potential, an ALE finite element formulation for the analysi s of nonlinear sloshing problems has been developed. The ALE kinemat ical description is introduced to move the computational mesh independently of f luid motion, and the container fixed noninertial coordinate system is employed to establish the governing equations so that the mesh is needed to be updated in this coordinate system only. This leads to a very simple mesh moving algorithm which makes it easy to trace the motion of the moving boundaries and the free su rface without producing undesirable distortion of the computational mesh. The fi nite element method and finite difference method are used spacewise and timewise , respectively. A numerical example involving either forced horizontal oscillati on or forced pitching oscillation of the fluid filled container is presented to illustrate the effectiveness and the robustness of the method. In additi on, this work can be extended for the fluid structure interaction problems.

Characteristic analysis of liquid forced nonlinear sloshing under low-gravity

Under low gravity,the Lagrange equations in the form of volume integration of pressure of nonlinear liquid sloshing were built by variational principle. Based on this,the analytical solution of nonlinear liquid sloshing in pitching tank could be investigated. Then the velocity potential function was expanded in series by wave height function at the free surface so that the nonlinear equations with kinematics and dynamics free surface boundary conditions were derived. Finally,these nonlinear equations were investigated analytically by the multiple scales method. The result indicates that the system's amplitude-frequency response changes from ‘soft-spring’ to ‘hard-spring’ in the planar motion with the decreasing of the Bond number,while it changes from ‘hard-spring’ to ‘soft-spring’ in the rotary motion.

Multidimensional modal analysis of liquid nonlinear sloshing in right circular cylindrical tank

The multidimensional modal theory proposed by Faltinsen, et al. （2000） is applied to solve liquid nonlinear free sloshing in right circular cylindrical tank for the first time. After selecting the leading modes and fixing the order of magnitudes based on the Narimanov-Moiseev third order asymptotic hypothesis, the general infinite dimensional modal system is reduced to a five dimensional asymptotic modal system （the system of second order nonlinear ordinary differential equations coupling the generalized time dependent coordinates of free surface wave elevation）. The numerical integrations of this modal system discover most important nonlinear phenomena, which agree well with both pervious analytic theories and experimental observations. The results indicate that the multidimensional modal method is a very good tool for solving liquid nonlinear sloshing dynamics and will be developed to investigate more complex sloshing problem in our following work.

Nonlinear semi-analytical modeling of liquid sloshing in rectangular container with horizontal baffles

A nonlinear semi-analytical scheme is proposed for investigating the finiteamplitude nonlinear sloshing in a horizontally baffled rectangular liquid container under the seismic excitation.The sub-domain method is developed to analytically derive the modal behaviors of the baffled linear sloshing.The viscosity dissipation effects from the interior liquid and boundary layers are considered.With the introduction of the generalized time-dependent coordinates,the surface wave elevation and velocity potential are represented by a series of linear modal eigenfunctions.The infinite-dimensional modal system of the nonlinear sloshing is formulated based on the Bateman-Luke variational principle,which is further reduced to the finite-dimensional modal system by using the NarimanovMoiseev asymptotic ordering.The base force and overturning moment induced by the nonlinear sloshing are derived as the functions of the generalized time-dependent coordinates.The present results match well with the available analytical,numerical,and experimental results.The paper examines the surface wave elevation,base force,and overturning moment versus the baffle parameters and excitation amplitude in detail.

Stable response of low-gravity liquid non-linear sloshing in a circle cylindrical tank

Under pitch excitation, the sloshing of liquid in circular cylindrical tank includes planar motion, rotary motion and rotary motion inside planar motion. The boundaries between stable motion and unstable motion depend on the radius of the tank, the liquid height, the gravitational intension, the surface tensor and the sloshing damping. In this article, the differential equations of nonlinear sloshing are built first. And by variational principle, the Lagrange function of liquid pressure is constructed in volume intergration form. Then the velocity potential function is expanded in series by wave height function at the free surface. The nonlinear equations with kinematics and dynamics free surface boundary conditions through variation are derived. At last, these equations are solved by multiple-scales method. The influence of Bond number on the global stable response of nonlinear liquid sloshing in circular cylinder tank is analyzed in detail. The result indicates that variation of amplitude frequency response characteristics of the system with Bond, jump, lag and other nonlinear phenomena of liquid sloshing are investigated.

Stability analysis of liquid filled spacecraft system with flexible attachment by using the energy–Casimir method

The stability of partly liquid filled spacecraft with flexible attachment was investigated in this paper. Liquid sloshing dynamics was simplified as the spring-mass model, and flexible attachment was modeled as the linear shearing beam. The dynamic equations and Hamiltonian of the coupled spacecraft system were given by analyzing the rigid body, liquid fuel, and flexible appendage. Nonlinear stability conditions of the coupled spacecraft system were derived by computing the variation of Casimir function which was added to the Hamiltonian. The stable region of the parameter space was given and validated by numerical computation. Related results suggest that the change of inertia matrix, the length of flexible attachment, spacecraft spinning rate, and filled ratio of liquid fuel tank have strong influence on the stability of the spacecraft system.