Numerical Simulation of the Effect of Tank Shape on Sloshing Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Abstract

Sloshing is the violent motion of a resonant fluid in a moving tank. When the fluid moves and interacts with the tank, the dynamic pressure from such an interaction can cause large deformations of the tank walls and structure. In this study, a 3D numerical simulation was carried out with five variations of the LNG ship tank model: prismatic, rectangular, tube, spherical, and the new model with a filling ratio of 25%. Forced oscillation motion in a roll with f = 1.04 Hz and amplitude of movement 8.66°. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics is a Lagrangian meshless (non-grid) method known as mesh-free computational fluid dynamics. This method is very appropriate for the sloshing phenomenon because the sloshing phenomenon is closely related to free surface motion. Advanced visualization was performed using Blender version 2.92, and the sloshing simulation visualization is more realistic and attractive than conventional SPH post-processing. The results of this study indicate that different tank shapes influence reducing the dynamic pressure value. It is found that an effective tank shape is a tube tank and a new model tank with a reduced dynamic pressure value of 9% and 11%.