Hydroelastic modeling and active control of transient sloshing in a three dimensional rectangular floating roof tank

Partly filled rectangular containers are widely used for liquid transportation and storage in many industrial and civil applications. Undesirable liquid sloshing in these structures can highly degrade their reliable and safe operations. This paper presents a rigorous 3D hydro-elasto-dynamic analysis for suppression of transient liquid sloshing in a rigid-walled rectangular parallelepiped container that is equipped with a smart piezo-sandwich free-floating rectangular panel. The problem formulation is based on the linear water wave theory, the thin piezo-sandwich floating plate model, the pertinent structure/liquid compatibility condition, and the active damping control strategy. The controller gain parameters are systematically tuned using a standard MOPSO algorithm with conflicting objective functions. The key hydro-electro-elastic response parameters are calculated and discussed for three different external excitations, namely, a bidirectional seismic event, an oblique planar base acceleration, and a distributed impulsive floating roof excitation. Effectiveness of proposed active floating panel control configuration in remarkable suppression of the main hydro-elastic parameters is established, essentially regardless of liquid depth and loading configuration. Limiting cases are considered and validity of model is demonstrated against available data as well as by comparison with the results of a general finite element package.