Sloshing flows in a free surface anti roll tank - Numerical simulations and experimental validation

Abstract

Anti-roll tanks are tanks fitted onto ships in order to improve their response to roll motion, which has typically the largest amplitude among all the degrees of freedom. This paper presents a comparative study of a Volume of Fluid (VOF) based Eulerian method and a Lagrangian Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method in the simulation of sloshing flow inside a free surface tank (FST). The numerical schemes of the VOF and SPH methods are outlined and the simulation results are compared as well as the computational efficiency. Both slight and violent sloshing cases are considered. All the numerical results are validated by corresponding experimental data. Through the comparison, suggestions regarding to numerical calculations in terms of accuracy and efficiency have been given. Besides, a FST sloshing regime based on frequency domain study has been proposed. The performance of the FST is fully discussed based on this regime.