OMAE2017-62390 - Study of an Entrapped Air Pocket due to Sloshing Using Experiments and Numerical Simulations

Abstract

The capability of the OpenFoam software to model slamming where air is entrapped between the free surface and the structure is investigated. The test case studied is a previously studied phenomenon, where an air pocket is entrapped between the free surface and the upper corner of a rectangular tank during sloshing. The air is entrapped due to the shape of the wave approaching the roof. The air pocket is compressed and starts to oscillate. The oscillations resemble the free oscillations of a mass spring system. OpenFoam results are compared with experiments and a numerical method based on a boundary element method (BEM) both of which are available from the previous study. In this work a compressible VOF (Volume Of Fluid) Eulerian two-phase mixture flow solver called compressible InterFoam from OpenFOAM package is used to perform the simulations. The sensitivity of the results to numerical parameters is addressed.