Interface Between STAR-CCM+ and 42 for Enhanced Fuel Slosh Analysis

Fuel slosh is excited during spacecraft maneuvers. The forces and torques exerted on the spacecraft by the slosh must be controlled by the attitude control system to maintain correct pointing and spacecraft orbit. In some rare cases, the attitude control system may excite the slosh and cause a loss of control of the spacecraft, or the expected spacecraft motion from a certain control command will be different enough from the control command to adversely affect the mission. By linking the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the flight simulation software, the fuel slosh can be modeled at high fidelity by the CFD software, while receiving and passing information to and from the flight simulation software, thus increasing the fidelity of both models. In the past, fuel slosh has either been modeled with an equivalent mechanical model, such as a pendulum, or with a standalone CFD simulation.