Investigation on the equivalent mechanical longitudinal fluid sloshing model for a partially filled tank vehicle

This paper aims to investigate the equivalent mechanical model of longitudinal fluid sloshing for a partially filled tank vehicle. A one-degree-of-freedom (1DOF) mass-spring-damping (MSD) equivalent mechanical model proposed in the literature is first evaluated. To improve the precision of the MSD model, two 2DOF models those are the serial 2DOF (2DOF-S) model and the parallel 2DOF (2DOF-P) model, and a hybrid 3DOF (3DOF-H) model have been proposed, formulated and evaluated. Comparisons demonstrate that the 3DOF-H model can provide rather satisfying precision in broad ranges of tank ellipticity and fill level. Finally, the proposed 3DOF-H MSD sloshing model is further evaluated from the viewpoint of vehicle dynamics response. It is revealed that it is easy to integrate the 3DOF-H model with vehicle dynamics to build a fluid tank vehicle model which can reflect the basic dynamics property of a tank vehicle.