Simulation of large-amplitude three-dimensional liquid sloshing in spherical tanks

The propellant sloshing problem is of increasing concern in aerospace engineering. Computational-fluid-dynamics simulations have been carried out to predict three-dimensional large-amplitude liquid sloshing in spherical tanks. Basically an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian method is followed. The main challenges are tracking the motion of the contact line and free surface, defining the nodal velocities on the space curved wall boundary, and maintaining rational computational mesh at the same time. A novel mesh moving strategy is presented to update the mesh and meanwhile to suppress the mesh distortion. The mesh nodes on the free surface and contact line are restricted to move along prescribed orbits, and the nodes on the container wall are moved by an algebraic mesh moving algorithm. The finite element method combined with the characteristic-based split algorithm is adopted. The numerical results are compared to analytical and published experimental results for validation, and good agreement is observed.