SPH prediction of energy dissipation in a sloshing tank subjected to vertical harmonic excitations

In [Marrone et al. PRF 2021] the damping effect of sloshing flows on the dynamics of flexible structures was studied through an enhanced SPH model. Prediction of energy dissipation in these problems is of interest, among the others, in the aeronautic field to appropriately address sloshing-induced loads on aircraft wings. In the present work the same SPH scheme is applied and extensively validated on the experimental campaign performed in [Saltari er al. JFS 2022] in which a partially filled tank is subjected to harmonic vertical accelerations ranging from 0.5g up to 6g. Conversely to [Marrone et al. PRF 2021], in the present work long-time simulations are addressed spanning over more than 50 periods of oscillations. This approach allowed us to compare the predicted energy dissipation in terms of average value computed over several tank oscillations. The SPH scheme is tested over a large matrix of different frequencies and accelerations covering a wide range of flow regimes and spanning from mildly-deformed free surface to violent shaken flow. Even if the numerical model is only 2D and air phase is neglected, it is shown that the SPH solver is, in most of the cases, able to recover the experimental rate of dissipated energy with errors comparable to the intrinsic uncertainties of the problem. Considering that no parameter adjustment has been done in any of the performed test cases, this result makes the SPH a valid and competitive numerical solver for the simulation of such complex flows.