Free Surface Tracking for the Accurate Time Response Analysis of Nonlinear Liquid Sloshing

Liquid sloshing displays the highly nonlinear free surface fluctuation when either the external excitation is of large amplitude or its frequency approaches natural sloshing frequencies. Naturally, the accurate tracking of time-varying free surface configuration becomes a key task for the reliable prediction of the sloshing time-history response. However, the numerical instability and dissipation may occur in the nonlinear sloshing analysis, particularly in the long-time beating simulation, when two simulation parameters, the relative time-increment parameter a and the fluid mesh pattern, are not elaborately chosen. This paper intends to examine the effects of these two parameters on the potential-based nonlinear finite element method introduced for the large amplitude sloshing flow.