Scale effects of sloshing on a sway excited rectangular ship tank

Abstract

Sloshing behavior of liquid in containers is one of the fundamental fluid-structure interactions. Liquid sloshing is associated with various dynamical systems and engineering problem, such as the liquid cargo slosh in ships and trucks of transporting liquid, oil oscillation in large tanks, and water oscillation in a reservoir due to ground and wind acceleration, etc. Oscillation of water in a partially filled container due to the external forces or external disturbances is called as sloshing. An experimental study has been carried out to study the scale effects on sloshing dynamics of liquid in a partially filled sway excited rectangular tank. The model tanks considered in this study are 1:43, 1:57 and 1:86. The aspect ratio (hs/L) of 0.1625, 0.325, 0.4875 are adopted which represents 25%, 50% and 75% of liquid fill levels of tank depth respectively. A sloshing tank is positioned on the shake table such that during the sway excitations, the sloshing oscillations occurs along the longitudinal axis. Time histories of sloshing oscillations and sloshing force are measured using load cells and wave probes, respectively. The effect of excitation frequencies and excitation amplitudes on sloshing force and sloshing oscillations is discussed here. © 2019: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects