Aerospace Engineering
Fluid sloshing in a satellite
fuel tank at zero gravity
Aerospace engineers designing spacecraft for on-orbit operations face many unique design challenges.
Fuel acquisition is among the many challenges due to the complexity of the maneuvers and the interaction
of fuel dynamics with the spacecraft dynamics. FLOW-3D is well suited to model such operations. Any
maneuver can be simulated using its non-inertial reference frames and coupled rigid-body dynamics.
The motion and position of fuel in a microgravity environment is accurately simulated with powerful
surface tension and wall adhesion model.
Read more in our Aerospace Tech Papers
CFD-101 – Free Surface Modeling Methods
The presence of a free or moving boundary introduces serious complications for any type of flow analysis. For all but the simplest of problems, it is necessary to resort to numerical solutions. Even then, however, free surfaces require the introduction of special methods to define their location, their movement and their influence on a flow.
In the following discussion we briefly review the types of numerical approaches that have been used to model free surfaces, indicating the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Read more >