Numerical study on the sloshing flows in a prismatic tank using natural frequency of the prismatic shapes

Abstract

In this numerical study, a 2D prismatic tank - subjected under horizontal excitation - is used to analyse the sloshing characteristics for a specific range of Reynolds number, from 2.5 × 104 to 2.0 × 105. Three models of geometric variable δ1 - namely, δ1 = 50 mm, δ1 = 150 mm and δ1 = 250 mm - are used to observe the effects of the lower chamfered shape of the prismatic tank, where the Reynolds number for each δ1 ranges from 2.5 × 104 to 2.0 × 105 (12 cases). The volume of fluid (VOF) method is used for the multi-phase flow analysis. The fast Fourier transform (FFT) technique is used to analyse the frequency components of excitation force and the magnitude of the amplitude spectrum. The results show that the sloshing wave fluctuation becomes small when the geometric variable δ1 is larger. Also, the FFT technique shows that the resonance does not occur due to frequencies which are not integral multiple of the excitation frequency. Moreover, for the sloshing load analysis, the free surface length is an important parameter than the shapes of the lower section.