High fidelity computational methods in prediction of slosh dynamics including tank structure flexibility

There has been a considerable amount of research to account for slosh dynamics. In particular, the dynamic motion of fluids with rigid tank systems is fairly well known in both aerospace and ground vehicle stability studies. However, most of the research up to date has been limited to simple pendulum models without taking into account the flexibilities of the tank structure.; This dissertation presents two different computational approaches: (1) A high fidelity three dimensional approach of an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) based formulation; and (2) A Multibody dynamics approach (MBA) based on Kane's Dynamics. The relations between liquid sloshing and dynamic motion are investigated with and without considering the effects of flexibility at different liquid fill-fraction ratios. In addition, the effects of tank structure material are also studied.; In the first approach, a high fidelity full three dimensional solution, ALE the dynamic motion with the rigid and flexible structures are formulated by using non-liner explicit Finite Element Method(FEM) and the fluid motion is modeled using cell-centered Finite Volume Method(FVM). Through ALE, the system motion (motion of mass center and rotational motion) in three dimensional space is investigated with different tank structure properties such as rigid shell and flexible shell structure, with and without liquid inside and with different liquid fill-fraction ratios. In the second approach, MBA the Kane's dynamics formulation is introduced to derive the related equation of motion without considering tank flexibility. By this MBA, trajectory of translational, rotational motion and sloshing of this system are investigated. In both approach, the same external force, initial and boundary conditions are used. Finally, the results by these two methods are compared.