REORIENTATION OF ROTATING FLUID IN MICROGRAVITY ENVIRONMENT WITH AND WITHOUT GRAVITY JITTERS

In a spacecraft design, the requirements of a settled propellant are different for tank pressurization, engine restart, venting, or propellant transfer. The requirement to settle or to position liquid fuel over the outlet end of the spacecraft propellant tank prior to main engine restart poses a microgravity fluid behavior problem. In this paper, the dynamical behavior of liquid propellant, fluid reorientation, and propellant resettling have been estimated through the use of a super computer CRAY X-MP to simulate the fluid management in a microgravity environment. Results show that the resettlment of fluid can be accomplished more efficiently for fluids in a rotating tank than in a nonrotating tank. Also, better performance can be achieved for imposed oscillatory motions on the fluid tank because of less time needed to accomplish fluid resettlement, and less time between the initiation and termination of geysering.