Effect of vertical porous baffle on sloshing mitigation of two-layered liquid in a swaying tank

Abstract

The sloshing behavior of two-layered liquid in a rectangular sloshing tank with a vertical porous baffle under sway excitation has been investigated using both analytical and numerical methods. The analytical model is developed using the matched eigenfunction expansion method in conjunction with linear potential flow theory. The existence of vertical porous baffle results in energy dissipation by applying the boundary condition that pressure drop across the baffle is proportional only to the quadratic drag term. For comparison, numerical simulations are conducted using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with unsteady, implicit, and incompressible fluid equations. The study explores the effects of the liquid density ratio, the baffle's porosity, and its submergence depth, on various parameters including the free surface and interfacial elevations, hydrodynamic force on the tank surface, and horizontal force on the baffle. The trends observed in the analytical model align well with the CFD results and experiments. It is found that a fully submerged vertical porous baffle with a porosity close to P = 0.1 leads to stable and less dynamically active sloshing behavior in a two-layered liquid tank.