Sloshing fluid-structure interaction and induced damping effects: modelling and experimental analysis

All aircraft are subjected to dynamics loads resulting from in-flight atmospheric gusts and turbulence, with the resulting stresses determining the sizing, and hence weight, of the resulting structure. There is much interest in studying active and passive approaches to alleviate these loads, leading to more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly airplane designs. Recent work, as part of the H2020 SLOW-D project, has considered the use of fuel sloshing as a means of loads reduction, with fundamental transient response experiments, performed using a single degree of freedom system coupled to a liquid filled tank, demonstrating a multi-regime piecewise linear damping behaviour dependent on the amount of tank fill and the size of the excitation. This work continues the effort to improve the development of coupled fluid-structure sloshing models through investigation of the 2nd and 3rd transient response regions. Experimental measurements based on high frame-rate videos of the fluid surface motion and the tank vibration are used to further develop coupled structure / sloshing fluid computational models based on an SPH approach. A good comparison between the numerical model and the experimental measurements is found.