An experimental study of two-layer liquid sloshing under pitch excitations

Abstract

The non-resonant and resonant responses of a two-layer liquid system in a tank under pitch excitation were investigated experimentally in this study. The movement of both the free surface and the interface was automatically identified simultaneously by an image processing method, which can rectify the visually tilted frames in a moving system. When the frequency of external excitation was near the natural frequency related to upper layer liquid, free surface resonance can be triggered. On the other hand, when the frequency of the external excitation was close to the natural frequency related to lower layer, resonant response of the interface between two liquids occurred. It is also found that Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities with different length scales can be generated due to the reverse direction of velocities near the interface under different conditions. Such length scale of the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability can be estimated by using the critical Richardson number. In addition, the bottom of the tank may restrict the development of wave trough on the interface when the depth of lower layer was relatively shallow, while the free surface may limit the wave crest of interface when the thickness of the upper layer was small. Further investigations of the interface displacements for both non-resonant and resonant responses were also conducted in frequency domain.