Rollover stability analysis of tank vehicles based on the solution of liquid sloshing in partially filled tanks

Abstract

Tank vehicles have quite poor roll stability in driving. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to investigate tankers’ roll stability by vehicle dynamic modeling. As a fluid–solid coupling multi-body system, tank vehicle’s dynamic modeling must take liquid sloshing into account. The conventional solution on liquid sloshing by hydrodynamics is difficult and time-consuming, and the modeling of tankers obtained by this method was a distributed parameter system with infinite degree of freedoms. It was quite difficult and complicated to analyze tankers’ dynamic features and to design active control system by the distributed parameter system. Therefore, three different methods to describe liquid sloshing effects in partially filled tanks with elliptical cross sections were proposed in this article, which are the estimation of liquid sloshing, the improved estimation of liquid sloshing, and the modeling of equivalent mechanical model for liquid sloshing. Then, the dynamic modeling of tank vehicles was commenced based on that. It was found out that the roll stability performance of tank vehicles obtained by different models differs with each other. The quasi-static model obtained by the estimation of liquid sloshing could get an estimation on tanker’s rollover threshold quickly and easily, but it is with poor accuracy. The improved quasi-static model obtianed by the improved estimation of liquid sloshing could give a more accurate result on tanker’s rollover threshold, the solution is also easily and quickly. Rollover analysis based on equivalent mechanical model of liquid sloshing could reflect vehicle’s dynamics and is with high accuracy, but the process is of great complexity.