Numerical simulation of liquid sloshing in a partially filled container with inclusion of compressibility effects

A numerical scheme of study is developed to model compressible two-fluid flows simulating liquid sloshing in a partially filled tank. For a two-fluid system separated by an interface as in the case of sloshing, not only a Mach-uniform scheme is required but also an effective way to eliminate unphysical numerical oscillations near the interface. By introducing a preconditioner, the governing equations expressed in terms of primitive variables are solved for both fluids i.e., water, air, gas, etc. in a unified manner. In order to keep the interface sharp and to eliminate unphysical numerical oscillations in unsteady fluid flows, the nonconservative implicit split coefficient matrix method is modified to construct a flux-difference splitting scheme in the dual-time formulation. The proposed numerical model is evaluated by comparisons between numerical results and measured data for sloshing in an 80% filled rectangular tank excited at resonance frequency. Through similar comparisons, the investigation is further extended by examining sloshing flows excited by forced sway motions in two different rectangular tanks with 20% and 83% filling ratios. These examples demonstrate that the proposed method is suitable to capture induced free surface waves and to evaluate sloshing pressure loads acting on the tank walls and ceiling. © 2009 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3264835