Fluid thermal stratification in a non-isothermal liquid hydrogen tank under sloshing excitation

To the safe space operation of cryogenic storage tank, it is significant to study fluid thermal stratification under external heat leaks. In the present paper, a numerical model is established to investigate the thermal performance in a cryogenic liquid hydrogen tank under sloshing excitation. The interface phase change and the external convection heat transfer are considered. To realize fluid sloshing, the dynamic mesh coupled the volume of fluid (VOF) method is used to predict the interface fluctuations. A sinusoidal excitation is implemented via customized user-defined function (UDF) and applied on tank wall. The grid sensitivity study and the experimental validation of the numerical mode are made. It turns out that the present numerical model can be used to simulate the unsteady process in a non-isothermal sloshing tank. Variations of tank pressure, liquid and vapor mass, fluid temperature and thermal stratification are numerically investigated respectively. The results show that the sinusoidal excitation has caused large influence on thermal performance in liquid hydrogen tank. Some valuable conclusions are arrived, which is important to the depth understanding of the non-isothermal performance in a sloshing liquid hydrogen tank and may supply some technique reference for the methods of sloshing suppression. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.