Simulation of tank sloshing based on OpenFOAM and coupling with ship motions in time domain

Abstract

Tank sloshing in ship cargo is excited by ship motions, which induces impact load on tank wall and then affects the ship motion. Wave forces acting on ship hull and the retardation function are solved by using three-dimensional frequency domain theory and an impulse response function method based on the potential flow theory, and global ship motion is examined coupling with nonlinear tank sloshing which is simulated by viscous flow theory. Based on the open source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) development platform Open Field Operation and Manipulation (OpenFOAM), numerical calculation of ship motion coupled with tank sloshing is achieved and the corresponding numerical simulation and validation are carried out. With this method, the interactions of wave, ship body and tank sloshing are completely taken into consideration. This method has quite high efficiency for it takes advantage of potential flow theory for outer flow field and viscous flow theory for inside tank sloshing respectively. The numerical and experimental results of the ship motion agree well with each other.