Numerical and experimental investigation of sloshing in a water tank with a fully coupled fluid-structure interaction method

Abstract

In the present study, the harmonic movement of fluid flow and the behaviour of elastic structure under this movement are investigated. Accordingly, a recently developed fluid-structure interaction method in which fluid and structure are simulated with smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and finite element method (FEM) is used. The interaction between fluid and the structure is satisfied with the contact mechanics. In order to validate the numerical model under harmonic movement, different experiments are used. First, the structure is assumed to be rigid and the pressures calculated on the structure are compared with the experimental data available in the literature. Similarly, free-surfaces are also validated with novel experiments carried out in the context of this study. In addition, the interaction between an elastic structure and fluid is investigated in the novel experiments in which a water tank having an elastic buffer in the middle is moved under harmonic horizontal movement and the deflection of the elastic buffer and free-surface profiles are measured. Comprehensive results are given for all validation cases. According to the results, the numerical method is successful and can be used in these types of problems.