Sloshing dynamics in cylindrical tank with porous layer under harmonic and seismic excitations

Abstract

The severe sloshing induced by earthquake in cylindrical liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) storage tank is of great concern for liquid storage design. For suppressing sloshing, porous material attached to inner periphery of the tank wall is proposed and studied numerically by using OpenFOAM. The model was validated against with the available data of sloshing in cylindrical tank without and with ring baffle, and flow through porous media in a U-tube and porous dam break. Fair agreements between them are obtained. Findings show that damping effects of porous material layer was significant in linear sloshing scenario compared with ring baffle. The porous material layer was also proved to be good pressure absorber and energy dissipator as evidenced in pressure distribution and evolution of velocity and kinetic energy. Under 1-D harmonic excitation, nonlinear swirling waves could be effectively changed into planar waves due to the effects of porous material layer inside cylindrical tank. As a demonstration, sloshing damping effects of porous material layer in a real scale upright cylindrical tank under EL-centro earthquake excitation were investigated numerically.