Mechanical modelling of fuel sloshing for dynamical simulation of the lander on small gravity celestial body

Abstract

When the lander carries a large amount of fuel, the landing on a celestial body becomes difficult and dangerous due to sloshing of fuel. Sloshing of fuel causes turbulence of attitude and overturning of the lander. In order to design a landing gear and attitude control system, landing simulation with a sloshing will be required. The mechanical sloshing model that takes the place of experiment and computational fluid dynamics is required for the landing simulator. This paper describes the modelling of mechanical concentrated-constant sloshing models for a landing simulator and the result of numerical simulations of landing on a small body celestial bodies.