Fuel Sloshing

The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) group at the CSIR has developed a specialised numerical solver to predict the effect of the dynamic behaviour of fuel on aerospace structures. By providing a more accurate prediction of the dynamic fuel loads, the aerospace industry is can design safer and more efficient fuel systems.

Modelling of liquid-gas systems under violent loading conditions provides a cost efficient approach to analyse a wide range of operating conditions. This is achieved by means of automated pre- and post-processing. Enhancements to the in-house multiphase solver for violent sloshing include conservative, sharp interface capturing algorithms; improved pressure predictions for complex geometries as well as improved computational efficiency. The multiphase solver developed at the CSIR uses libraries from the open-source CFD toolset OpenFOAM®.