Numerical study of ring baffle effects on reducing violent liquid sloshing

A three-dimensional (3-D) numerical model NEWTANK was developed to study viscous liquid sloshing in a tank with internal baffles of different shapes and arrangements. The numerical technique named virtual boundary force (VBF) method was used to model the internal baffles with complex geometries. Laboratory experiments were conducted for non-linear sloshing in a rectangular tank with and without vertical baffle. The numerical model was validated against the measured data together with other available theoretical solutions and numerical results for liquid sloshing under surge and pitch motions. Liquid sloshing in a 3D prismatic tank with different ring baffle arrangements (e.g., height, width, etc.) were further investigated under near-resonant excitations of surge and pitch motions. The fast Fourier transform (FFT) technique was used to identify the dominant response frequencies of the liquid system to external excitations. The effects of ring baffles on reducing violent liquid sloshing were investigated and discussed in detail. Finally, a demonstration of liquid sloshing in the tank under six degree-of-freedom (DOF) excitations was presented.