Numerical study of liquid sloshing using smoothed particle hydrodynamics with adaptive spatial resolution

Liquid sloshing is a typical problem of free surface flow in a number of engineering applications. The efficient simulation of liquid sloshing, particularly the large deformation and breakup of free surface, is a challenge for numerical methods. This paper presents a numerical method based on smoothed particle hydrodynamics with adaptive spatial resolution (SPH-ASR) for liquid sloshing. The SPH-ASR method can adaptively adjust the spatial resolution based on the distance to the free surface and the moving boundary. The numerical method was validated against experimental results from literature. Then the SPH-ASR method was applied to study the liquid sloshing problem in a prismatic tank and a rectangular tank. The effects of liquid fill level, external excitation frequency and amplitude on liquid sloshing were investigated. The pressure at different points on the tank wall and the total moment on the rotating shaft of the tank were compared and analyzed.