PROJECT WORK

TITLE: SLOSHING DYNAMICS IN WAVE TANKS

SUBJECT: Numerical Analysis of Coastal Processes.

SUBJECT CODE: AM/WO 811

NAME: SAIARPAN V JOSHI

ROLL NO.: 202MS024

1. INTRODUCTION.
1.1 Liquid Sloshing.
1.2 Wave Tanks.
1.3 Sloshing in Wave Tanks.
2. SLOSHING DYNAMICS.
2.1 Governing Equation.
2.2 Numerical Procedure.
3. CONCLUSION.
4. REFERENCES.
 1. INTRODUCTION.

1.1 Liquid Sloshing.

Slosh is a phenomenon that happens only in the fluids in a container that is subjected to free
vibrations due to various reasons. The prerequisite for slosh to happen is the availability of
the free surface of the liquid. For the slosh to happen, the fluid must have a free surface in
order to have enough free board above the surface of the liquid to make it able for the liquid
to move freely under external agitation.

Depending on the type of the disturbances, the container shape, the type of the fluid inside the
container etc., there are different type of motions, free surface of the liquid undergoes such
as, simple planar, non-planar, rotational, symmetric, asymmetric, chaotic etc.

There are several possibilities of the way in which the liquid free surface would behave when
the container holding the liquid is agitated. This brings up some sort of curiosity to know in
what circumstances or in what combination of external forces or moments, does it bring up a
particular behavior of the free surface.

Thus, scientists did a lot of brainstorming and lot of experimental study in order to determine
the aforementioned. They named this study as “Sloshing Dynamics”. The Figure 1.1 depicts a
typical sloshing dynamics situation or a problem.

Figure 1.1: Typical Sloshing Dynamics problem.

1.2 Wave Tanks.

Wave tanks are basically the laboratory setups which are made to observe behavior of waves
by simulating the real conditions. The wave tanks are filled with water with a free open
surface and an actuator generates waves with the opposite end having a wave absorbing
surface.

These wave tanks are generally used to simulate the wave structure interactions that happen
in real in the seas or oceans. The necessary model tests in the design of Rubble Mound
Breakwaters or any other offshore structure for that matter are done in these wave tanks.

A general wave tank with waves in action is shown in the Figure 1.2.

1
 Figure 1.2: A wave tank housed at the ‘Jere .A. Chase Ocean Engineering Lab, Centre for
Coastal and Ocean Mapping, The University of New Hampshire, Durham’

1.3 Sloshing in Wave Tanks.

Wave tanks, when under work, has the only job of generating waves which is nothing, but a
desperate sloshing induced in the tank using various methods or wave generators. Thus, in
order to design the wave tanks to withstand the dynamic forces of the waves, we need to
study the effect of sloshing dynamics on wave tanks.

The slosh in the liquid induces various types of hydrodynamic forces and moments which
cannot be studied analytically. We need complex procedures to study the dynamics of
sloshing.

Figure 1.3 depicts different possible modes in sloshing

Figure 1.3: Different modes of Sloshing.

The basic problem in sloshing dynamics involves the estimation of the hydrodynamics
pressure distribution, forces, moments and natural frequencies of the free liquid surface.
These hydrodynamic pressures of liquid have 2 distinct components. One is directly
proportional to the acceleration of the tank, or in this case, the acceleration of the wave
generator system. The second one is known as the convective pressure and represents the free
surface liquid motion.

The mechanical models such as mass-spring-dashpot or pendulum systems are usually used
to model the sloshing.

A liquid’s motion inside the container has an infinite number of natural frequencies, but it is
the lowest few modes that are most likely to be excited by the motion of the wave generator.
Therefore, majority of the studies have concentrated more on the lowest few natural
frequencies of the forced harmonic oscillations the liquid is subjected to.

Abundant research had been made on the sloshing dynamics and there are wide varieties of
numerical methods, analytical solutions and experiments. This basically obeys dynamic
boundary condition which is nonlinear thus making the sloshing problem a nonlinear
boundary value problem.

Although the sloshing problem is nonlinear, by assuming the free surface elevation to be
small and applying the linearized free surface boundary conditions, a linear theory of sloshing
is developed. This linear theory is acceptable in some cases such as, when the external
excitation is small and no where near the sloshing natural frequencies.

Nonlinear sloshing problem is difficult to solve analytically because of its nonlinear boundary
conditions implying a numerical modeling is necessary.

2.1 Governing Equation.

Figure 2.1 depicts the sloshing problem in a wave tank mentioning the boundary conditions
as well.

As per the Eulerian-Lagrangian scheme, the free surface nodes behave like Lagrangian
particles and interior nodes behave like Eulerian particles. This nonlinear sloshing analysisis
carried out using finite element method. A four noded isoparametric element is used in the
analysis.

The calculation of the velocities from the velocity potential is an important step to study the
sloshing behavior. The velocity field is interpolated from the velocity potential according to
least square method. Fourth order Runge-Kutta Method is employed to advance the solution
in time.

3
For horizontal excitations, the free surface undergoes resonance when excitation frequency is
equal to the slosh frequency and shows beating phenomenon when excitation frequency is
close to fundamental slosh frequency.

Figure 2.1: Sloshing wave tank with moving coordinates.

Considering a rectangular tank fixed in Cartesian coordinate system ‘Oxz’, which is moving
with respect to inertial Cartesian coordinate system ‘Ooxozo’. The origins of this system are at
the left end of the tank wall at the free surface and pointing upwards in ‘z’ direction.

The wave generator is assumed to be inducing the waves along ‘x’ axis.

Fluid is assumed to be inviscid, incompressible, and irrotational. Therefore, the fluid motion
is governed by the Laplace’s equation with the unknown as the velocity potential ∅.

∇ 𝜙=0

The fluid obeys Newmann boundary conditions at the walls of the container or the tank and
Dirichlet boundary condition at the liquid free surface. In the moving coordinate system, the
velocity component of the fluid normal to the walls is 0.

4
2.2 Numerical Procedure.
The solution of the nonlinear sloshing boundary value problem is obtained using finite
element method. The entire liquid domain is discretized by using 4 noded isoparametric
quadrilateral elements.

Figure 2.2 shows a typical mesh of the liquid domain using isoparametric 4 noded elements.

Figure 2.2: A typical mesh of the liquid domain using

Figure 2.3 shows the flow chart of the numerical procedure for this problem of nonlinear
sloshing.

Figure 2.3: Numerical procedure for nonlinear sloshing simulation.

5
Figure 2.4 shows the first 4 mode shapes derived using the above mentioned procedure after
plotting the same on the 4 noded isoparametric mesh as shown in the Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.4: The first 4 mode shapes of sloshing.

6
 3. CONCLUSION.
The wave tanks which are continuously subjected to dynamic loading when under use, is
completely because of the sloshing effect of the water which is being agitated to simulate the
original sea or oceanic conditions wherein we have waves of height, period and energies of
values lying in a very wide spectrum. Thus keeping in mind, the randomness of the waves in
the true situation of seas and oceans, the wave tanks are made to induce similar randomness
in the wave generation so that the model that we are testing on should be subjected to a near
to true conditions for it, when scaled up to the originality, to efficiently sustain the true loads.

This randomness in the waves bring about a great amount of dynamic load on the tank which
must, now, efficiently withstand. The application of sloshing dynamic study on the wave tank
is legit as, though the tank here doesn’t apparently get displaced to induce the slosh, it
literally is a slosh happening there due to the continuous displacement of the water.

7
 4. REFERENCES.
1. “Liquid Sloshing Dynamics, Theory and Applications”
Raouf A Ibrahim.
2. “Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of Sloshing”
Siva Srinivas Kolukula and P. Chellapandi.
Structural Mechanics Laboratory, Reactor Design Group, Indira Gandhi Center for
Atomic Research, Kalpakkam 603102, Tamilnadu, India