Sloshing Characteristics of a Flowing Liquid in a Tank

Abstract

A small rectangular tank installed with two vertical pipes at both sides of the tank was filled with water flowing due to water ejection and suction through holes in the pipes. The tank system was excited at the natural sloshing frequency and the relationship between sloshing magnitude and flow velocity was experimentally investigated for four kinds of flow patterns. The experiment revealed that the sloshing vibration was almost completely suppressed when steady flow in the water surface reached a certain magnitude that reduced the first natural frequency of the sloshing by about 5% to that of still water sloshing. Taking the steady flow in the water surface into a potential analysis of the sloshing vibration, we obtained the natural frequency as f=(1/2π) √(gk tanh(kh)-(Uk)²), k=π/l, l=tank width, which gave a fairly good explanation for the sloshing suppression of a flowing liquid system.