Liquid Motion in a Rotating Tank Experiment (LME)

The Liquid Motion Experiment (LME), which flew on STS 84 in May 1997, was an investigation of liquid motions in spinning, nutating tanks. LME was designed to quantify the effects of such liquid motions on the stability of spinning spacecraft, which are known to be adversely affected by the energy dissipated by the liquid motions. The LME hardware was essentially a spin table which could be forced to nutate at specified frequencies at a constant cone angle, independently of the spin rate. Cylindrical and spherical test tanks, partially filled with liquids of different viscosities, were located at the periphery of the spin table to simulate a spacecraft with off-axis propellant tanks; one set of tanks contained generic propellant management devices (PMDs). The primary quantitative data from the flight tests were the liquid-induced torques exerted on the tanks about radial and tangential axes through the center of the tank. Visual recordings of the liquid oscillations also provided qualitative information. The flight program incorporated two types of tests: sine sweep tests, in which the spin rate was held constant and the nutation frequency varied over a wide range; and sine dwell test, in which both the spin rate and the nutation frequency were held constant. The sine sweep tests were meant to investigate all the prominent liquid resonant oscillations and the damping of the resonances, and the sine dwell tests were meant to quantify the viscous energy dissipation rate of the liquid oscillations for steady state conditions. The LME flight data were compared to analytical results obtained from two companion IR&D programs at Southwest Research Institute. The comparisons indicated that the models predicted the observed liquid resonances, damping, and energy dissipation rates for many test conditions but not for all. It was concluded that improved models and CFD simulations are needed to resolve the differences. This work is ongoing under a current IR&D program.