Energy dissipation evaluation in violent 3D sloshing flows subject to vertical accelerations

The present research activity is devoted to the use of fuel sloshing to reduce the design loads on aircraft wings. These are highly flexible structures that can significantly deform under gust loads. Wings house the fuel tanks, and generally carry an amount of fuel comparable in weight to that of their structural components. In the present research the ?-LES-SPH model was adopted to investigate the damping effect of fuel sloshing on the dynamics of flexible wing-like structures. This represents quite a challenging task for SPH and more generally, for CFD tools, as the vertical accelerations involved in the present research can reach 10g. The resulting flow is extremely complex due to the high turbulence developed, the violent impacts and intense fragmentation of the air-liquid interface. In the present work three-dimensional simulations are considered and the 3D effects on the energy dissipation mechanisms. The results are also compared with two-dimensional numerical simulations performed in previous SPHERIC articles, with the aim of comparing the flow evolution, the forces on the tank and the dissipated energy against experimental data.