In order to investigate the effects of liquid sloshing inside a spherical tank, a numerical model called "Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics" was used. Firstly, the accuracy of the method was examined with the help of previously done experiments. The SPH is a Lagrangian particle-based method and very effective to model nonlinear problems as in liquid sloshing. This conference paper represents the outcomes of an ongoing PhD project.
Sloshing phenomenon is associated with various engineering problems such as the liquid oscillations in tanks caused by earthquakes, motions of liquid in LNG ship tanks or liquid motion in fuel tank of a car. The localized impact pressures on rigid tank walls can cause structural damage and may even create sufficient moment to affect the stability of any vehicle that carries liquid cargo. The prediction of such loads is essential for the design of structures and their operational safety. The analysis of sloshing can become very complex because of its non-linear nature. Analytical models are only available for simple tank shapes and the lack of experimental data for complex tank shapes must be underlined. The theories and basics of sloshing phenomenon are represented in two remarkable publications with great details (Ibrahim, 2005; Faltinsen and Timokha, 2009). As in other engineering problems, Computational Fluid Dynamics becomes a very popular tool for sloshing studies. SPH is one of these popular CFD tools. In 1977, two outstanding papers were published in the area of astronomy (Gingold and Monaghan,1977; Lucy,1977). Recently, the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method has been adapted from astrophysics to free surface flows (Monaghan,1994; Monaghan and Kos,1999). The inherent benefit of the SPH formulation is the transformation of complex partial differential equations (PDEs) into their corresponding ordinary differential equations (ODEs) via construction of integral equations with a smoothing (kernel) function.
