A 3D BEM model for liquid sloshing in baffled tanks

The present work aims at developing a boundary element method to determine the natural frequencies and mode shapes of liquid sloshing in 3D baffled tanks with arbitrary geometries. Green's theorem is used with the governing equation of potential flow and the walls and free surface boundary conditions are applied. A zoning method is introduced to model arbitrary arrangements of baffles. By discretizing the flow boundaries to quadrilateral elements, the boundary integral equation is formulated into a general matrix eigenvalue problem. The governing equations are then reduced to a more efficient form that is merely represented in terms of the potential values of the free surface nodes, which reduces the size of the computational matrices considerably. The results obtained using the proposed model are verified in comparison with the literature and very good agreement is achieved. Finally, a number of example tanks having common configurations are used to investigate the effect of baffle on sloshing frequencies and some conclusions are outlined. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.