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Simulating Propellant Reorientation of Vehicle Upper Stage in Microgravity Environment

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Abstract

The computational and experimental studies have been performed to investigate the hydrodynamic process of liquid propellant reorientation for the launch vehicle series fuel tanks in microgravity environment. The VOF method was used to simulate the free surface flow of gas-liquid. The process of the liquid propellant reorientation started from initially curved interface at low Bond number. The propellant reorientation flow procedure at high Bond number was obtained from numerical simulation and scale model experiment in drop tower. The numerical results agreed well with the experiments. The results can be used to adjust the engineering reorientation parameters.

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Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 11072249, No. 50890182 and No. 11102211) and the Knowledge Innovation Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KGCX-SW-409).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Microgravity, Institute of Mechanics,Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Zhang-Guo Li, Zhi-Qiang Zhu, Qiu-Sheng Liu, Hai Lin & Jing-Chang Xie

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  1. Zhang-Guo Li
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  2. Zhi-Qiang Zhu
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  5. Jing-Chang Xie
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Correspondence to Qiu-Sheng Liu.

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Li, ZG., Zhu, ZQ., Liu, QS. et al. Simulating Propellant Reorientation of Vehicle Upper Stage in Microgravity Environment. Microgravity Sci. Technol. 25, 237–241 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-013-9351-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-013-9351-z

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