SPH modelling of dissipative sloshing flows under violent vertical harmonic excitation

Abstract

In the present work the damping effect of sloshing flows in tanks subjected to vertical harmonic oscillations is modelled through the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) numerical method. The prediction of energy dissipation in these problems is of interest, among the others, in the aeronautic field to appropriately address sloshing-induced loads on aircraft wings. To this purpose, an enhanced SPH scheme is applied and extensively validated through a comparison with a recent experimental campaign in which a partially filled tank is subjected to harmonic vertical accelerations ranging from 0.25 g up to 6 g. Conversely to previous works addressing the same phenomenon, in the present work long-time simulations are performed spanning over several periods of oscillations. This approach allows comparing the predicted energy dissipation in terms of averages computed over several tank oscillations, thus providing a robust numerical outcome. The numerical scheme is tested over a large matrix of different frequencies and accelerations covering a wide range of flow regimes and spanning from mildly-deformed free surface to violent shaken flow. Both 2D and 3D numerical frameworks are considered and compared to the experimental reference. It is shown that the 3D solver is able, in most of the cases, to recover the experimental rate of dissipated energy with errors comparable to the intrinsic uncertainties of the problem whereas the 2D solution significantly under-predicts the damping in high-energy sloshing regimes.