Advances in Numerical Analysis
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 571528, 10 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/571528
Research Article

Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of Sloshing

Structural Mechanics Laboratory, Reactor Design Group, Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam 603102, Tamilnadu, India

Received 28 November 2012; Accepted 10 January 2013

Academic Editor: Zhangxing Chen

Copyright © 2013 Siva Srinivas Kolukula and P. Chellapandi. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The disturbance on the free surface of the liquid when the liquid-filled tanks are excited is called sloshing. This paper examines the nonlinear sloshing response of the liquid free surface in partially filled two-dimensional rectangular tanks using finite element method. The liquid is assumed to be inviscid, irrotational, and incompressible; fully nonlinear potential wave theory is considered and mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian scheme is adopted. The velocities are obtained from potential using least square method for accurate evaluation. The fourth-order Runge-Kutta method is employed to advance the solution in time. A regridding technique based on cubic spline is employed to avoid numerical instabilities. Regular harmonic excitations and random excitations are used as the external disturbance to the container. The results obtained are compared with published results to validate the numerical method developed.