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Numerical Study on Thermodynamic Performance in a Cryogenic Fuel Storage Tank Under External Sloshing Excitation

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Abstract

Fluid sloshing usually causes some serious safety issues during the transportation and utilization of liquid fuel in different engineering applications. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics model is established to investigate the thermal physical process and sloshing hydrodynamics in a cryogenic fuel storage tank. Both the experimental validation and calculation grid sensitive analysis are conducted. The present numerical calculation model was turned out to be acceptable and proper for fluid sloshing prediction. Based on the proposed numerical model, the sloshing force and moment, the tank pressure variation, the fluid temperature distribution and the dynamic response of the free surface are investigated and analyzed respectively. The results show that the sinusoidal excitation has obvious influences on the thermodynamic and hydrodynamics performance in cryogenic fuel storage tanks. With some valuable conclusions obtained, this study is of significance to the depth understanding on the non-isothermal fluid sloshing, and may supply some technique supports for the safety design of cryogenic storage tanks.

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Abbreviations

A :

Excitation amplitude, 0.2 m

a :

Acceleration of the sloshing excitation

D :

Diameter of the tank

E :

Energy term

F vol :

Volume force

f :

Excitation frequency with the value of 1.0 Hz

g :

Gravity acceleration

G b :

Turbulence kinetic energy caused by buoyancy

G k :

Turbulence kinetic energy due to the mean velocity

Gr:

Grashof number

h :

Convection heat coefficient

h fg :

The latent heat

k :

Turbulence kinetic energy, thermal conductivity

k a :

Thermal conductivity of the air

l :

Characteristic length

M :

Molecular mass

\(\dot{m}\) :

Rate of mass transfer

\(\dot{m}_{{{\text{lv}}}}\), \(\dot{m}_{{{\text{vl}}}}\) :

Evaporation and condensation rates

Nu:

Nusselt number

p :

Pressure

Pr:

Prandtl number

q :

Heat flux

R :

The universal gas constant

S h :

Energy source term

\(S_{{\text{k}}}\),\(S_{\varepsilon }\) :

Source terms

T en :

Temperature of the environment

T l :

Liquid temperature

T sat :

Saturation temperature

T v :

Vapor temperature

T w :

Temperature of the tank wall

v :

Mean velocity vector

Y m :

The contribution of the fluctuation dilatation

\(\alpha\) :

Phase fraction

\(\beta\) :

Accommodation coefficient, 1.0

\(\rho\) :

Density

\(\varepsilon\) :

Dissipation rate of kinetic energy,

\(\mu\) :

Dynamic molecular viscosity

\(\mu_{{\text{t}}}\) :

Eddy viscosity

\(\sigma_{{{\text{lv}}}}\) :

Interfacial surface tension

\(\kappa_{{\text{v}}}\),\(\kappa_{{\text{l}}}\) :

Surface curvature

coeff:

Coefficient

l :

Liquid

v :

Vapor

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2019GF11).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Geomechanics and Deep Underground Engineering, School of Mechanics and Civil Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221116, China

    Zhan Liu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Technologies in Space Cryogenic Propellants, Beijing, 100028, China

    Zhan Liu, Hong Chen & Qiang Chen

  3. Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Cryogenics, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Beijing, 100190, China

    Liubiao Chen

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  1. Zhan Liu
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  2. Hong Chen
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Correspondence to Zhan Liu.

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Liu, Z., Chen, H., Chen, Q. et al. Numerical Study on Thermodynamic Performance in a Cryogenic Fuel Storage Tank Under External Sloshing Excitation. Int. J. Aeronaut. Space Sci. 22, 1062–1074 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42405-021-00385-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42405-021-00385-9

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