SinSEOn Project (Sloshing SPH Environment for long-time Oscillation simulation) FINAL REPORT

The present report is dedicated to the numerical investigation of sloshing flows inside a ship fuel tank. Long time simulations, involving 3-hours real-time duration with realistic severe sea-state forcing, have been performed using a parallel CFD solver running for several weeks on a dedicated cluster. The numerical model adopted is an enhanced version of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics model (SPH). The SPH is a Lagrangian Particle Method characterized by an intrinsic conservation of mass and momenta which makes this model well adapted for the simulation of violent free-surface flows. The adopted model relies on a Riemann Solver for the calculation of the particle interactions which increases the stability of the scheme and allows for accurate predictions of the pressure during water impact stages. Three different filling height conditions are considered. For all of them energetic sloshing flows are induced with the occurrence of several water impact events. The latter are focused on specific zones of the tank depending on the considered filling height. For some conditions the SPH pressure predictions are compared with the experimental ones provided by Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI). A critical discussion of these predictions is performed in order to highlight in which cases the numerical solver is able to provide good local loads estimations. Conversely when the SPH results appear to be not realistic, comments on the causes linked to the disagreements with experiments are given.