Nonlinear modeling of liquid sloshing in a moving rectangular tank

A nonlinear liquid sloshing inside a partially filled rectangular tank has been investigated. The fluid is assumed to be homogeneous, isotropic, viscous, Newtonian and exhibit only limited compressibility. The tank is forced to move harmonically along a vertical curve with rolling motion to simulate the actual tank excitation. The volume of fluid technique is used to track the free surface. The model solves the complete Navier-Stokes equations in primitive variables by use of the finite difference approximations. At each time step, a donor-acceptor method is used to transport the volume of fluid function and hence the locations of the free surface. In order to assess the accuracy of the method used, computations are verified through convergence tests and compared with the theoretical solutions and experimental results. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.