The crashworthiness of a dual layer fuel tank, with the outer layer made of metal and the inner layer made of woven fabric composite material, is fundamental for the survivability of an impact with the ground in emergency. In this research, the simulation of a three-dimensional dual layer fuel tank in the impact with the ground is achieved through the multimaterial arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) finite element method because of its ability to control mesh geometry independently of geometry. At the same time, the naked flexible tank in the impact with the ground is simulated for the evaluation of the outer metal tank. The ALE description is adopted for the fluid domain, while for the structural domain the Lagrangian formulation is considered. The computation of the fluid-structure interaction and the impact contact between the tank and the ground are realized by the penalty-based coupling method. Then, the dynamic behaviors of the dual layer fuel tank and the naked flexible tank in the impact are analyzed. In the meantime, the parallelism of the dual layer fuel tank is discussed because the computation of the fluid-structure interaction and the impact contact is quite time consuming. Based on domain decomposition, the recursive coordinate bisection (RCB) is improved according to the time-consuming characteristics of fluid-filled tank in the impact. The result indicates, comparing with the RCB algorithm, that the improved recursive coordinate bisection algorithm has improved the speedup and parallel efficiency.

1.
Giavotto
,
V.
,
Caprile
,
C.
, and
Sala
,
G.
, 1988, “
The Design of Helicopter Crashworthiness
.”
AGARD, 66th Meeting of the Structures and Material Panel, Energy Absorption of Aircraft Structures as an Aspect of Crashworthiness
,
Luxembourg
, pp.
6.1
6.9
.
2.
Pascale
,
L.
,
Lecce
,
L.
, and
Marulo
,
F.
, 2000, “
Design and Testing of Aluminum Alloy Crash-Resistant External Fuel Tank
,”
CEAS Forum on CRASH QUESTION
, Capua, Italy, pp.
23
32
.
3.
Fasanella
,
E. L.
,
Jackson
,
K. E.
, 2001, “
Crash Simulation of a Vertical Drop Test of a B737 Fuselage Section With Auxiliary Fuel Tank
,”
Third Triennial International Fire & Cabin Safety Research Conference
, Atlantic City, NJ, pp.
22
25
.
4.
Sareen
,
A. K.
,
Smith
,
M. R.
, and
Mullins
,
B. R.
, 2001, “
Applications of a Nonlinear Dynamics Tool to Rotorcraft Design Problems at Bell Helicopter Textron Inc
.”
The 27th European Rotorcraft Forum
, Moscow, Russia, pp.
5.1
15
.
5.
Babu
,
S. S.
, and
Bhattacharya
,
S. K.
, 1996, “
Finite Element Analysis of Fluid-Structure Interaction Effect on Liquid Retaining Structures Due to Sloshing
,”
Comput. Struct.
0045-7949,
59
(
6
), pp.
1105
1171
.
6.
Meywerk
,
M.
,
Decker
,
F.
, and
Cordes
,
J.
, 2000, “
Fluid-Structure Interaction in Crash Simulation
,”
Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., Part D (J. Automob. Eng.)
0954-4070,
214
(
7
), pp.
669
673
.
7.
Belytschko
,
T.
,
Kennedy
,
J. M.
, and
Schoeberle
,
D. F.
, 1980, “
Quasi-Eulerian Finite Element Formulation for Fluid-Structure Interaction
,”
ASME J. Pressure Vessel Technol.
0094-9930,
102
(
63
), pp.
62
69
.
8.
Nitikitpaiboon
,
C.
, and
Bathe
,
K. J.
, 1993, “
An Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian Velocity Potential Formulation for Fluid-Structure Interaction
,”
Comput. Struct.
0045-7949,
45
(
4
), pp.
871
891
.
9.
Kjellgren
,
P.
, and
HyvaÈrinen
,
J.
, 1998, “
An Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian Finite Element Method
,”
Comput. Mech.
0178-7675,
21
(
11
), pp.
81
90
.
10.
Souli
,
M.
,
Ouahsine
,
A.
, and
Lewin
,
L.
, 2000, “
ALE Formulation for Fluid-Structure Interaction Problems
,”
Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng.
0045-7825,
190
(
5
), pp.
659
675
.
11.
Liu
,
W. K.
, 1981, “
Finite Element Procedure for Fluid-Structure Interactions and Application to Liquid Storage Tanks
,”
Nucl. Eng. Des.
0029-5493,
65
, pp.
221
238
.
12.
Pal
,
N. C.
,
Bhattacharyya
,
S. K.
, and
Sinha
,
P. K.
, 2003, “
Non-Linear Coupled Slosh Dynamics of Liquid-Filled Laminated Composite Container: A Two Dimensional Finite Element Approach
,”
J. Sound Vib.
0022-460X,
261
(
4
), pp.
729
749
.
13.
Marco
,
A.
, and
Luigi
,
M. L.
, 2005, “
Fluid-Structure Interaction of Water Filled Tanks During the Impact With the Ground
,”
Int. J. Impact Eng.
0734-743X,
31
(
3
), pp.
235
254
.
14.
Zhang
,
A.
, and
Suzuki
,
K.
, 2006, “
A Comparative Study of Numerical Simulations for Fluid-Structure Interaction of Liquid-Filled Tank During Ship Collision
,”
Ocean Eng.
0029-8018,
33
pp.
1
8
.
15.
Alia
,
A.
, and
Souli
,
M.
, 2006, “
High Explosive Simulation Using Multi-Material Formulations
,”
Appl. Therm. Eng.
1359-4311,
26
(
10
), pp.
1032
1042
.
16.
Shyue
,
K. M.
, 2001, “
A. Fluid-Mixture Type Algorithm for Compressible Multicomponent Flow with Mie-Gruneisen Equation of State
,”
J. Comput. Phys.
0021-9991,
171
(
2
), pp.
678
707
.
You do not currently have access to this content.