Influence factors of the numerical model build-up on fluid sloshing

Abstract

It is important to predict fluid sloshing in cryogenic fuel storage tanks with an accurate numerical model. In the present paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was established to simulate fluid sloshing. The fluid sloshing experiments in an apparent vessel were adopted to be the benchmark and used to validate the numerical model. As most of investigations were conducted with some certain model settings, few are involved on the influence factor on numerical model build-up. Based on the selected sloshing experiments, effects of the numerical time step and phase change factor on fluid sloshing were investigated. The results showed that the time steps of 0.001 and 0.002 s and the phase change factor of 0.1 s−1 could meet the requirement of fluid sloshing prediction. With some valuable conclusions being obtained, the present study may supply some effective references for numerical model building on fluid sloshing.