Sloshing effect, Fluid Structure Interaction analysis

Abstract

The sloshing effect of the liquids is considered to be an important factor in area such as cargo ships (tankers) which transporting petroleum liquids or other liquids (water inside of ballast tanks). Sloshing can produce big problems so is essential to apply the prevention measures. For example in water ballast tanks, the sloshing motion of sea water inside of ballast tanks will bring large fluid pressures and impact loads, which might destroy the structure of tanks. It is known that ships with larger tanks, less internal structure, and more free surface area, the number of failures attributed to sloshing liquids have increased. Nowadays it is recognized that the ballast tanks which may be partly filled are the crucial group of tanks onboard. The problem of an assessment of liquid sloshing effect is more important than ever because of the obligatory ballast water management requirement. Our paper is an original fluid structure interaction analysis during sloshing phenomenon. We are using ANSYS CFX to simulate the behavior of two fluids, (seawater and air from the ballast tank), requires itself the multiphase flow model. Due to the movement of the ballast/cargo tanks is complex involving pitching and rolling of ship, it is clear that the simulation is done with the ANSYS CFX transient module. Because this complex simulation requires massive resources calculation we consider a simplified CAD models for a part of the oil chemical ballast tank structure.