Patent Document ID: 8521495
Application ID: 12964771
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method, performed by a computer system, for calculating a liquid surface plane location in a containment vessel, comprising: (a) storing a first set of data comprising a solid model representation of said containment vessel; (b) storing a second set of data representing a spatial orientation of said containment vessel; (c) storing a third set of data representing a magnitude and direction of acceleration of said containment vessel; (d) storing liquid volume data representing a volume of liquid in said containment vessel; and (e) calculating a location of a surface plane of said liquid in said containment vessel using at least said first through third sets of data and said liquid volume data; wherein step (e) comprises: (i) selecting a current guess for the location of said liquid surface plane; (ii) calculating the volume of liquid below the current guess for the liquid surface plane location using regularized solid modeling operations; (iii) comparing the volume of liquid below the current guess for the liquid surface plane location to the volume of liquid represented by said liquid volume data; (iv) if the volume of liquid below the current guess for the liquid surface plane location is not sufficiently close to the volume of liquid represented by said liquid volume data, using a numerical method to select a different current guess for the liquid surface plane location; and (v) repeating steps (ii) through (iv) until the volume of liquid below the current guess for the liquid surface plane location is sufficiently close to the volume of liquid represented by said liquid volume data.