Propellant Sloshing Parameter Extraction from CFD Analysis

Propellant slosh is a potential source of disturbance critical to the stability of space vehicle. The sloshing dynamics is typically represented by a mechanical model of spring mass damper. This mechanical model is then included in the equation of motion of the entire vehicle for Guidance, Navigation and Control analysis. The typical parameters required by the mechanical model include natural frequency of the sloshing, sloshing mass, sloshing mass center coordinates, and critical damping coefficient. During the 1960 s US space program, these parameters were either computed from analytical solution for simple geometry or by experimental testing for the sub-scaled configurations. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the soundness of a CFD approach in modeling the detailed fluid dynamics of tank sloshing and the excellent accuracy in extracting mechanical properties for different tank configurations and at different fill levels. The validation studies included straight cylinder against analytical solution, and sub-scaled Centaur LOX and LH2 tanks with and without baffles against experimental results. This effort shows that CFD technology can provide accurate mechanical parameters for any tank configuration, and is especially valuable to the future design of propellant tanks, as there is no previous experimental data available for the same size and configuration.