individual
What campus are you from?
Daytona Beach
Authors' Class Standing
Shaik Rayhan Anwar, Junior
Lead Presenter's Name
Shaik Rayhan Anwar
Faculty Mentor Name
Dr. Sathya N. Gangadharan
Abstract
Fluid slosh is the natural phenomenon describing fluids in a partially filled tank being acted upon by external forces which cause transient movement within the confined container. Propellant slosh has been a problem with spacecraft, restricting complete control of its stability, trajectory, and vehicle safety due to undesirable dynamic alterations. The Microgravity Lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) has been working on solving this for 15+ years, opposing traditional passive approaches to opt for more active methods. This research focuses to further build upon the legacy project’s Magneto-Active Propellant Management Device (MAPMD) by reducing non-trivial mass penalties, removing computational structural complexity, and implementing a multi-physics simulation engine to streamline the process. Additionally, this work introduces and investigates a new, novel idea: Magnetorheological Propellant Management Device (MRPMD), a magneto-active interfacial layer of magnetorheological (MR) fluid positioned on top of the free surface to provide dampening as required. Prior research indicated that upcoming advancements would involve the transition to a microgravity environment, which is a lot easier to accomplish using MR fluid. Currently, a computational model that can describe fluid slosh in a tank has been designed and optimized using Simcenter STARCCM+, an end-to-end environment having geometry, meshing, transient free-surface CFD, and electromagnetic analysis within a single software, so studies can proceed without transferring meshes and state fields among separate programs, reducing inconsistencies. Completed simulations have shown that a cylindrical tank of 4 inch radius, filled up to around 66% of its height (8 inches), experiencing lateral sinusoidal sloshing at low and high amplitudes, 1.8 mm and 3.0 mm respectively, agree with measurements from an in-lab slosh apparatus under comparable excitation, providing a quantitative reference for further exploration. The next phase introduces the MR fluid middle layer between water, used in the simulation to emulate hydrazine, and xenon, a pressurized gas used instead of air to avoid preemptive propellent oxidization. Subsequent study combines magnetic actuation using electromagnetic coils and MR-fluid behavior in STAR-CCM+ to measure the complete effectiveness of this approach. Future work will systematically vary tunable parameters including MR-fluid formulation and compare results between STARCCM+ and Ansys Fluent to accurately incorporate trained reinforcement learning models for simulating slosh in microgravity.
Did this research project receive funding support from the Office of Undergraduate Research.
No
An Investigation of the Magneto-Active Propellant Slosh Control Mechanism for Cylindrical Tanks Using an Adaptive Magnetorheological Fluid Interface
Fluid slosh is the natural phenomenon describing fluids in a partially filled tank being acted upon by external forces which cause transient movement within the confined container. Propellant slosh has been a problem with spacecraft, restricting complete control of its stability, trajectory, and vehicle safety due to undesirable dynamic alterations. The Microgravity Lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) has been working on solving this for 15+ years, opposing traditional passive approaches to opt for more active methods. This research focuses to further build upon the legacy project’s Magneto-Active Propellant Management Device (MAPMD) by reducing non-trivial mass penalties, removing computational structural complexity, and implementing a multi-physics simulation engine to streamline the process. Additionally, this work introduces and investigates a new, novel idea: Magnetorheological Propellant Management Device (MRPMD), a magneto-active interfacial layer of magnetorheological (MR) fluid positioned on top of the free surface to provide dampening as required. Prior research indicated that upcoming advancements would involve the transition to a microgravity environment, which is a lot easier to accomplish using MR fluid. Currently, a computational model that can describe fluid slosh in a tank has been designed and optimized using Simcenter STARCCM+, an end-to-end environment having geometry, meshing, transient free-surface CFD, and electromagnetic analysis within a single software, so studies can proceed without transferring meshes and state fields among separate programs, reducing inconsistencies. Completed simulations have shown that a cylindrical tank of 4 inch radius, filled up to around 66% of its height (8 inches), experiencing lateral sinusoidal sloshing at low and high amplitudes, 1.8 mm and 3.0 mm respectively, agree with measurements from an in-lab slosh apparatus under comparable excitation, providing a quantitative reference for further exploration. The next phase introduces the MR fluid middle layer between water, used in the simulation to emulate hydrazine, and xenon, a pressurized gas used instead of air to avoid preemptive propellent oxidization. Subsequent study combines magnetic actuation using electromagnetic coils and MR-fluid behavior in STAR-CCM+ to measure the complete effectiveness of this approach. Future work will systematically vary tunable parameters including MR-fluid formulation and compare results between STARCCM+ and Ansys Fluent to accurately incorporate trained reinforcement learning models for simulating slosh in microgravity.