Dynamic variation of interface shape in a liquid oxygen tank under a sinusoidal sloshing excitation

Abstract

In this study, a numerical model is built to simulate the coupled process of fluid flow and thermal physical performance in a cryogenic liquid oxygen storage tank. Both the external heat leak and liquid-vapor phase change are taken into consideration. The convection thermal boundary is used to simulate the heat inputs. The sinusoidal sloshing excitation is applied on the tank wall and realized by User-defined functions. Moreover, the mesh motion treatment is adopted and coupled with the volume of fluid model to predict the movement of the liquid-vapor interface. The pressure data during fluid sloshing is selected to validate the proposed numerical model, which shows the present model has great accuracy in predicting fluid sloshing with the relative error being less than 5.0%. The grid-independence study is conducted as well. Calculated by the present numerical model, the phase distribution is investigated. With the dynamic monitors being set, variations of the interface profiles are obviously displayed under different sloshing amplitudes. It shows the initial sloshing amplitude has obvious influences on the dynamic response of the liquid-vapor interface. During the whole sloshing process, the vapor is cooled by the subcooled liquid. While for the effect of the phase change on variation of the free interface, it becomes greatly prominent with the increase of the sloshing amplitude. Moreover, with the consideration of interface phase change, both the sloshing moment and liquid pressure decrease with time, which is largely different from the parameter variations calculated without considering of the interface phase change. With some valuable conclusions obtained, the present study is significant to the in-depth investigation on the non-isothermal sloshing dynamic process in ocean engineering.