Validation of Fuel Tank Slosh Noise and Vibration Predictions

Noise resulting from fuel tank slosh is becoming an important issue for hybrid vehicles design. Noise issues are typically revealed at prototype stage, requiring expansive redesign and qualification tests.Prediction of noise and vibration from fuel tank slosh has been challenging due to 1) broadband characteristic of slosh noise making time domain coupled fluid-structure solutions inadequate and 2) important influence of fluid loading on structural response making traditional one-way or decoupled vibro-acoustic approaches inadequate. A novel approach for the efficient and accurate prediction of tank slosh noise and vibration over a broad frequency range is introduced. The method relies on prediction of time varying tank wall pressure using CFD simulation and computation of fully coupled vibro-acoustic response of partly filled tank under slosh load.Validation results are shown for a simplified tank structure, including free surface, tank internal wall pressure, tank vibration and radiated noise results.