A partitioned fluid-structure interaction solver for two-phase sloshing and flexible spacecraft dynamics
Abstract
This paper presents a high-fidelity direct numerical simulation (DNS)-fluid-structure interaction (FSI) framework for rigid-liquid-flexible spacecraft dynamics under microgravity conditions. The liquid-gas flow is simulated with the incompressible two-phase solver implemented in DIVA, validated against FLUIDICS experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The flexible appendages are described by a rotating assumed-mode plate model that accounts for geometric stiffening. The fluid and structural operators are coupled through a Dirichlet-Neumann fixed-point algorithm with Aitken relaxation, and a closed-system mechanical energy balance is used as an a posteriori diagnostic to assess the energy imbalance of the partitioned discretisation. The coupling strategy is validated against an experimental free-decay sloshing benchmark, and its numerical consistency is assessed through spatial sensitivity studies of the energy-balance defect. Prescribed-motion, rigid open-loop, and flexible open-loop simulations of a spin-up manoeuvre are compared to isolate the effect of structural feedback on the sloshing response. Reduced liquid models identified from the different simulation architectures exhibit different predictive capabilities when embedded in the same rigid-flexible plant. A controller synthesized from the reduced model identified from the flexible simulation is replayed in the nonlinear CFD-FSI environment. The reduced model reproduces the principal attitude and actuator responses for the considered manoeuvre but does not recover the detailed nonlinear sloshing-load history. The framework provides a high-fidelity environment for analysing coupled spacecraft dynamics, identifying control-oriented models, and assessing reduced-model-based control strategies beyond their linear design representation.
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BibTeX
@misc{zucchelli2026partitioned,
title = {{A partitioned fluid-structure interaction solver for two-phase sloshing and flexible spacecraft dynamics}},
author = {Umberto Zucchelli and Miguel Alfonso Mendez and Annafederica Urbano and Sebastien Vincent-Bonnieu and Piotr Wenderski and Francesco Sanfedino},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.28355},
eprint = {2609.28355},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.28355},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A partitioned fluid-structure interaction solver for two-phase sloshing and flexible spacecraft dynamics
AU - Umberto Zucchelli
AU - Miguel Alfonso Mendez
AU - Annafederica Urbano
AU - Sebastien Vincent-Bonnieu
AU - Piotr Wenderski
AU - Francesco Sanfedino
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.28355
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.28355
AB - This paper presents a high-fidelity direct numerical simulation (DNS)-fluid-structure interaction (FSI) framework for rigid-liquid-flexible spacecraft dynamics under microgravity conditions. The liquid-gas flow is simulated with the incompressible two-phase solver implemented in DIVA, validated against FLUIDICS experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The flexible appendages are described by a rotating assumed-mode plate model that accounts for geometric stiffening. The fluid and structural operators are coupled through a Dirichlet-Neumann fixed-point algorithm with Aitken relaxation, and a closed-system mechanical energy balance is used as an a posteriori diagnostic to assess the energy imbalance of the partitioned discretisation. The coupling strategy is validated against an experimental free-decay sloshing benchmark, and its numerical consistency is assessed through spatial sensitivity studies of the energy-balance defect. Prescribed-motion, rigid open-loop, and flexible open-loop simulations of a spin-up manoeuvre are compared to isolate the effect of structural feedback on the sloshing response. Reduced liquid models identified from the different simulation architectures exhibit different predictive capabilities when embedded in the same rigid-flexible plant. A controller synthesized from the reduced model identified from the flexible simulation is replayed in the nonlinear CFD-FSI environment. The reduced model reproduces the principal attitude and actuator responses for the considered manoeuvre but does not recover the detailed nonlinear sloshing-load history. The framework provides a high-fidelity environment for analysing coupled spacecraft dynamics, identifying control-oriented models, and assessing reduced-model-based control strategies beyond their linear design representation.
ER -