Sloshing effects on supersonic flutter characteristics of a circular cylindrical shell partially filled with liquid

Abstract

Summary This paper aims to revisit the effect of sloshing on the flutter characteristics of a partially liquid‐filled cylinder. A computational fluid‐structure interaction model within the framework of the finite element method is developed to capture fluid‐structure interactions arising from the sloshing of the internal fluid and the flexibility of its containing structure exposed to an external supersonic airflow. The internal liquid sloshing is represented by a more sophisticated model, referred to as the liquid sloshing model, and the shell structure is modeled by Sanders' shell theory. The aerodynamic pressure loading is approximated by the first‐order piston theory. The initial geometric stiffness due to prestresses in the initial configuration stemming from the fluid hydrostatic pressure, internal pressure, and axial compression load is also considered. The obtained results reveal that the sloshing of the internal fluid has little influence on the supersonic flutter boundary of a cylinder partially filled with liquid, at least for the case considered here. It is also shown that the critical freestream static pressure predicted by the sloshing model is negligibly larger than that calculated by the hydroelastic model of the internal fluid, which means that the sloshing of the internal fluid slightly overestimates the flutter boundary.