A Study on the Suppression of Sloshing in a Liquid Tank : 1st Report, Suppression of Slosing by Means of a Reversed U-tube

Abstract

As one of the promising methods to suppress sloshing in a liquid tank, a reversed U-tube is employed as a dynamic damper and its damping characteristics are studied theoretically and experimentally. It is found that, when the oscillation of liquid column in the reversed U-tube is so coupled to sloshing in the tank that the natural frequency of the former is nearly equal to the fundamental one of the latter, the total system exhibits the vibration characteristics of an inertia-coupled, two degree-of -freedom system, and that the reversed U-tube can play the role of dynamic damper. It is also confirmed experimentally that it could suppress the resonant amplitudes of sloshing to 1/6 - 1/10 of the undamped ones, even when such small values of the equivalent stiffness ratios are chosen as 3.5 - 4.5%