Experimental Study of Sloshing Load on LNG Tanks for Unrestricted Filling Operation

This paper presents a numerical and experimental study of sloshing loads on liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels. Conventional LNG carriers with membrane-type cargo systems have filling restrictions from 10% to 70% of tank height. The main reason for such restrictions is high sloshing loads around these filling depths. However, intermediate filling depths cannot be avoided for most LNG vessels except the LNG carrier. This study attempted to design a membrane-type LNG tank with a modified lower-chamfer shape that allows all filling operations. First, numerical sloshing analysis was carried out to find an efficient height of the lower-chamfer that can reduce sloshing pressure at partially filled conditions. The numerical sloshing analysis program SHI-SLOSH was used for numerical simulation; this program is based on SOLA-VOF. The effectiveness of the newly designed tanks was validated by 1:50-scale three-dimensional tank tests. A total of three different tanks were tested: a conventional tank and two modified tanks. As test conditions, various filling depths and wave periods were considered, and the same test conditions were applied to the three tanks. During the test, slosh-induced dynamic pressures were measured around the corners of the tank wall. The measured pressure data were post-processed and the pressures of the three different tanks were statistically compared in several ways. Experimental results show that the modified tanks were quite effective in reducing sloshing loads at low filling conditions. This study demonstrated the possibility of all filling operations for LNG cargo containment systems.