Effects of baffles geometry on sloshing dynamics of a viscous liquid tank

Abstract

Baffles are used effectively to reduce the sloshing response of liquid in the liquid storage containers. In this paper, a brief equivalent method is proposed to model the influence of different baffle geometrical effects on liquid sloshing. It has been showed that the natural frequencies and the dynamic response of the liquid in the container are drastically changed if the free liquid surface in a cylindrical container is being covered with structural parts. The advantages of a partly covered free surface plane lies in the shifting of the natural propellant frequencies above and away from the control frequency of a space vehicle, and in the decrease of the sloshing masses participating in the dynamic motion of the system. The fundamental natural frequency of a viscous and incompressible liquid has been determined for different geometrical shape and width of an annular ring baffle attached to the tank wall. The response to translational and pitching excitation has also been evaluated and showed the shifting of the resonance margins to higher values. Simulation results showed the effectiveness of this procedure. The presented approach may be applied to the various arbitrary coverage of free liquid surface and different geometry of container. Key words: Sloshing dynamics, incompressible liquid, translational/pitching excitation.