A NURBS-based isogeometric boundary element method for analysis of liquid sloshing in axisymmetric tanks with various porous baffles

Abstract

An isogeometric boundary element method (IGA-BEM) based on the non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) is firstly performed to investigate the liquid sloshing in axisymmetric tanks with the porous baffles. The proposed method can completely maintain the advantages of the BEM that only the boundary of a domain requires discretization. By applying the NURBS basis functions it can exactly describe the geometry of the boundary. Meanwhile, it can also be obtained better solution field approximation at the domain boundary. Furthermore, as to the axisymmetric geometries of the containers considered in this paper, the 3-D liquid sloshing problems can be effectively reduced to 2-D ones on half of the cross-sections of the containers, which can significantly increase the computational efficiency. Meanwhile, the zoning method is employed in this paper to treat the arbitrary mounted porous baffles, and the Laplace equation is utilized as the governing equation of the potential flow model by assuming the fluid motion to be inviscid, irrotational and incompressible. Additionally, the weighted residual method together with the Green’s theorem is applied to develop the BEM integral equation. The natural sloshing frequencies and dynamic sloshing forces solved by the proposed method are compared with the available literatures and the traditional boundary element method (BEM). Good agreements are observed in the comparisons between numerical results and those of the existing literatures. And higher accuracy and convergence can be achieved by the proposed IGA-BEM method with significantly fewer nodes than the traditional BEM. Moreover, spherical tanks with the coaxial hemispherical, wall-mounted conical or surface-piercing cylindrical porous baffle, ellipsoidal tanks with spheroidal or surface-piercing cylindrical porous baffle, and the toroidal tank with tubular porous baffle are considered to investigate the effects of the porous-effect parameter, radius, length, height, horizontal and vertical semi-axes of the porous baffle on the sloshing characteristics (i.e. dynamic sloshing forces and surface elevations). The results show that the surface-piercing cylindrical porous baffle offers more noticeable suppression on sloshing response than the hemispherical and spheroidal porous baffles. Changing the radius of the tubular porous baffle has almost negligible effect on the sloshing force acting on the toroidal tank. The excitation frequency corresponding to the maximal value of sloshing force can be altered evidently by changing the porous-effect parameter of the porous baffle. In addition, choosing reasonable porous-effect parameter, radius, horizontal semi-axes and relatively larger length, height as well as vertical semi-axes for the porous baffles yields considerable suppression on the sloshing response.