Numerical Modeling of Coupled Surge-Heave Sloshing in a Rectangular Tank with Baffles

Lv Ren,Yinjie Zou,Xin Jin,Mingming Liu,Dengsong Li,Jinbo Tang,Mi-An Xue

doi:10.1155/2021/5545635

Abstract

Liquid sloshing under coupled surge and heave excitations in a rectangular tank has been numerically investigated by applying a Navier–Stokes solver. Fieriest coupled sloshing was further considered, and the internal baffle was expected to suppress the violent sloshing wave. After getting fully validated against available results from the literatures, the numerical model was applied to research coupled sloshing, and both vertical baffle and horizontal baffle have been considered. Due to the strong vortexes created by the sharper corners of the baffles and the reduction of the effective water bulk climbing through the tank walls, the sloshing was dramatically reduced. The increase of the baffle distance away from the tank bottom led to a decrease in the sloshing wave. It was noted that the baffle near the free surface caused the maximal dissipation. The frequency response of the sloshing wave was accordingly illustrated.

Highlights

Liquid sloshing widely exists in partially filled tanks encountering external excitations, such as seismic excitation, ship motion, road transportation, and so on
Numerical Methodology and Validation e incompressible Newtonian fluids are considered, which can be described through the Navier– Stokes equations. e structure is modeled by the virtual boundary force (VBF) method [12], and the free surface is tracked by the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method [37]. is section is divided into three parts: one introduces the basic governing equations, and other two give the validations
Convergent tests have been conducted for different uniform grid sizes (0.0025 m, 0.005 m, and 0.01 m), and the results reveal that grid size 0.005 m is enough to resolve the sloshing wave in baffled tanks. en, the numerical computation domain 0.49 m × 0.1 m × 0.5 m is discretized into 98 × 20 × 100 uniform grid system, with the grid sizes being Δx Δy Δz 0.005 m. e thickness of the baffle remains unchanged, which is equal to 0.005 m for all cases

Summary

Introduction

Liquid sloshing widely exists in partially filled tanks encountering external excitations, such as seismic excitation, ship motion, road transportation, and so on. As a result of the frequently reported incidents caused by the liquid sloshing [1], it is necessary to study coupled sloshing and find effective ways to mitigate the sloshing energy to ensure structural safety. Some theoretical approaches such as separation of variables, perturbation, and multimodal methods have been applied to study the linear and nonlinear sloshing waves [2,3,4,5,6]. Further work on the strongly nonlinear coupled sloshing is still needed

Methods

Results

Conclusion