Energy Dissipation with Sloshing for Absorber Design

Abstract

Sloshing is the low frequency oscillation of the free surface of a liquid in a partially full container. Due to its detrimental effects, efforts are usually made in the direction of suppressing sloshing. In addition, intentionally induced sloshing may be employed as an effective energy sink to provide protection for resonant structures exposed to excessive vibration levels. It is generally reported that sloshing absorbers with shallow levels of liquid are more effective energy dissipators than those with deep levels. However, there has not yet been a study to reveal the mechanism of energy dissipation for practical applications, although there has been ample empirical proof for effectiveness. One of the limitations from a numerical perspective lies with the difficulty in predicting extreme free surface behaviour by traditional grid based computational methods. The objective of this paper is to report initial observations in this direction using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). SPH is a Lagrangian method of solving the equations for fluid flow, that is suitable for modeling free surface phenomena such as sloshing due to its grid-free nature. Results are reported in this paper in the form of numerical case studies.