The Application of Fluid Structure Interaction Techniques within Finite Element Analyses of Water-Filled Transport Flasks

Historically, Finite Element (FE) analyses of water-filled transport flasks and their payloads have been carried out assuming a dry environment, mainly due to a lack of robust Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) modelling techniques. Also it has been accepted within the RAM transport industry that the presence of water would improve the impact withstand capability of dropped payloads within containers. In recent years the FE community has seen significant progress and improvement in FSI techniques. These methods have been utilised to investigate the effects of a wet environment on payload behaviour for the regulatory drop test within a recent transport licence renewal application. Fluid flow and pressure vary significantly during a wet impact and the effects on the contents become complex when water is incorporated into the flask analyses. Modelling a fluid environment within the entire flask is considered impractical; hence a good understanding of the FSI techniques and assumptions regarding fluid boundaries is required in order to create a representative FSI model. Therefore, a Verification and Validation (V&V) exercise was undertaken to underpin the FSI techniques eventually utilised. A number of problems of varying complexity have been identified to test the FSI capabilities of the explicit code LS-DYNA, which is used in the extant dry container impact analyses. RADIOSS explicit code has been used for comparison, to provide further confidence in LS-DYNA predictions. Various methods of modelling fluid are tested, and the relative advantages and limitations of each method and FSI coupling approaches are discussed. Results from the V&V problems examined provided sufficient confidence that FSI effects within containers can be accurately modelled.