Volume-Filling Effects on Sloshing Frequency in Simplified and Explicit Dynamic Finite Element Models of Tank Wagons During Braking and Turning

Numerical analysis of fluid sloshing in tank wagons is amongst essential research ideas that are focused by railway engineers. The free surface of fluid becomes unstable and turns into a dynamic complex non-linear problem for fluid-structure interaction (FSI). In this paper, initially, the dynamic response of the tank, including lateral force analysis and pressure distribution during braking, is obtained by using an explicit dynamic finite element model based on the Multi Material Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian method (MM-ALE). Then, the simplified model is developed for sloshing during turning. Numerical finite element model is validated using a test setup. Comparing these models during turning with parametric studies for tank filling, it is observed that the estimated frequency and amplitude of sloshing, when filling is less than 25%, are less than 10% different form the measured results. Therefore, the simplified model in the above conditions can be used with an acceptable degree of accuracy. It also causes a remarkable reduction in the time and the cost of the numerical calculations.