How to add hydrostatic load to the inside of an enclosed tank?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am trying to simulate liquid in an horizontal style oil tank but I am unsure how to apply the load to the internal surfaces. In the drawing workspace I can add a section to see inside the tank but this option does not appear to be available in the simulation workspace. I was thinking I could cut the tank into two bodies but A. I'm not sure that is the best way to do it and B. how do I ensure that they are simulated as a single body.

Can anyone suggest the best way to approach this type of problem? I have attached my model in case it is needed.

Thanks,

Oisin

[James.Youmatz · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

Welcome to the Fusion 360 Forums!

So I have a couple of ideas you can try. The first is to use the select other menu within Fusion. If you hold your left mouse button while hovering over a face, a menu will pop up allowing you to select hidden faces. With your model however, this is a bit tricky due to there being many faces on the interior of the tank.

What I would do is as you suggested - cut the tank in half so you have a body you can hide. To do this, I would go into the Modify menu and use the Split Body command. Then, in the Sim environment, you will need to make sure that there are bonded contacts between the two bodies - this will ensure that it behaves like one continuous body. 

*One other thought is to toggle the visibility (from the navigation toolbar along the bottom) to be a wireframe instead of a solid. Might make it easier to select through.

Check out my screencast below:

[TheCADWhisperer]

It appears to me that you have a leak in your tank at the bottom of the heads.

I think the entire modeling process could be significantly simplified.

I will try to post an example later today.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the detailed example, I'll definitely try those methods. The select other menu will surely come in handy in the future even if I have too many faces to get it right in this model. 

[Anonymous]

Any advice on how to improve my modelling is very much appreciated as I'm sure is painfully obvious I haven't been using Fusion 360 for very long.

[JDMather]

I probably should have broken up Sketch1 into 2 or 3 sketches for a beginner, but this should give you some ideas.

(You could make the 10mm fillets larger for easier selection for hydrostatic force and then change back to 10mm, or even check with and without the fillets to see if they make significant difference in the results.) I did change your pipe wall thickness, that is easy for you to Presspull to the 5mm thickness.

Note that the file size of my example is significantly smaller than your file.

238kb vs 2084kb

[Anonymous]

I think I understand how you did sketch one, I did have training in pro engineer back in uni but it was very mechanical solid design focused. We never really worked on hollow designs or this type of simulation.

Building the model as a solid and doing a shell operation never occurred to me, that is an excellent approach. Thanks for the help.