In the present study, a fast-marching particle level set method is used to track a free surface and a two-phase finite difference flow solver is employed to simulate fluid motion. This model can be used to simulate many phenomena such as 2D and 3D sloshing, wave motion and dam break problems. Validation cases are employed that show excellent agreement with analytical solutions and data. The accuracy and efficiency of the new method is illustrated by applying it to study cases of 3D sloshing in a tank.
The problem of liquid sloshing in moving or stationary containers remains of great concern to aerospace, civil, and nuclear engineers; physicists; designers of road tankers and ship tankers; and mathematicians. The transportation of free-surface fluids by ship or rail and the sloshing of free surface fluids in the fuel tanks of airplanes and rockets represent only two of many examples of sloshing, but their clear relation to the safety of human life highlights the importance of investigating this phenomenon. A comprehensive review of liquid sloshing can be found in (Ibrahim 2005). Sloshing waves in a rectangular tank have been extensively studied in the last few decades. Many researchers expend effort to obtain the solution analytically based on potential flow theory, but a theoretical analysis is not valid for viscous and turbulent flow and the overturning and breaking waves during violent sloshing can not be described. Physical experiments are also an important approach for studying liquid sloshing. For example, laboratory measurements of wave height and hydrodynamic pressure have been reported by several investigators (Okamoto 1997). These measurements are very useful for validating theoretical solutions and numerical results. In terms of numerical simulation of liquid sloshing, the boundary element and finite element methods (Wu 1998) have been adopted to study these problems, based on potential flow theory.
