Investigation on the sloshing effect in a 2D tank under harmonic excitation using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and Finite Volume method (FVM)

Sloshing describes liquids motion in the semi-filled tanks, and exerts dynamic loading on its walls. This effect is of great importance in a number of dynamic systems e.g. aerospace vehicles, road tankers, liquefied natural gas carriers, elevated water towers and petroleum cylindrical tanks. Pressures insert impacts which are important for structural strength evaluation and its correct assessment is challenging for designers because of high share of nonlinear effects, complicated changes of free surface, strong impact phenomenon and air trapping effects. Since, numerical capabilities of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method allow proper simulation of the fluid and/or the free surface we used it to investigate the behavior of a water tank exposed to a harmonic excitation. Besides, a Finite Volume (FV) analysis was employed using FLOW3D software, for the further comparison of the results from the SPH method. To assess the results, temporal variations of the impact pressure at the specific height of the tank wall is compared against the results from the experiment and also, the Finite Difference (FD) method. The comparison showed strong correlation of SPH results with the experimental ones. But, FLOW3D is not sufficiently capable of estimating the trend of pressure time history especially near the extremes.