fuelTankType

A fuel tank groups the vessels that are filled and emptied together. The tank has no shape of its own: its geometry is the set of its vessels, and what it adds is the place in the aircraft that they share.

Placement

A tank is placed like any other component of the model, and the rules of transformationType apply to it unchanged. With parentUID the tank names the component it is attached to, usually a fuselage or a wing, and then follows the translation of that component but neither its rotation nor its scaling. Without a parent the transformation is read in the global coordinate system.

The attribute symmetry mirrors the whole tank, with all its vessels, at the named plane, so that a tank which exists on both sides of the aircraft is written once.

Vessels

The vessels of a tank are nested in its coordinate system, so the transformation of the tank scales and rotates them together with their own translation. Several vessels form one tank wherever they are filled as one, for example a pressure vessel inside a vacuum jacket, or a row of cylinders below the cabin floor.

Two side views of a fuselage with fuel tanks: (a) the whole fuselage with the forward tank, the belly tank of two small cylinders and the rear tank, and the translation of the rear tank measured from the origin of the fuselage; (b) the rear tank enlarged, with the pressure vessel inside the vacuum jacket, the origin of the tank at the apex of the forward dome of the outer vessel and the origin of the inner vessel a little behind it

Figure (a) shows three tanks in the fuselage they are attached to, and the translation of the rear tank measured from the origin of that fuselage. Figure (b) enlarges the rear tank: the pressure vessel sits inside the vacuum jacket, and the two vessels have different origins because each of them starts at the apex of its own forward dome.

The excerpt shows the rear tank of the figure, with the two vessels shortened; vesselType gives them in full.

<fuelTank uID="rearTank">
    <name>Rear tank</name>
    <description>Liquid hydrogen tank behind the cabin: a pressure vessel with torispherical domes inside a vacuum jacket with ellipsoidal domes.</description>
    <parentUID>Fuselage</parentUID>
    <transformation>
        <translation>
            <x>13.6</x>
            <y>0</y>
            <z>0</z>
        </translation>
    </transformation>
    <vessels>
        <vessel uID="rearTank_outerVessel">
            <name>Outer vessel</name>
            ...
        </vessel>
        <vessel uID="rearTank_innerVessel">
            <name>Inner vessel</name>
            ...
        </vessel>
    </vessels>
</fuelTank>

Liquid hydrogen tank attached to a fuselage

Attributes

Name	Type	Constraints	Use	Description
`@externalDataDirectory`	`xsd:string`		optional	Directory of the external data file
`@externalDataNodePath`	`xsd:string`		optional	Path of the node inside the external data file
`@externalFileName`	`xsd:string`		optional	Name of the external data file
`@symmetry`	`symmetryXyXzYzType`	5 values	optional	Symmetry plane the component is mirrored at
`@uID`	`xsd:ID`		required	UID

Child elements

Name	Type	OccurrenceHow often the element may appear at this place. The schema writes it as minOccurs and maxOccurs on the declaration.	Description
sequenceThe children below must appear in exactly this order. Each may repeat as often as its own occurrence allows.
`name`	`stringBaseType`	[1..1] required	Name
`description`	`stringBaseType`	[0..1] optional	Description
`parentUID`	`stringUIDBaseType`	[0..1] optional	Component the fuel tank is attached to, usually a fuselage or a wing. The tank then follows the translation of that component.
`transformation`	`transformationType`	[1..1] required	Position and orientation
`vessels`	`vesselsType`	[1..1] required	Vessels forming the fuel tank

fuelTankType

Attributes

Child elements

Used by

In a dataset · 1 path

In the schema · 1 declaration