Simulation of three-dimensional liquid nonlinear sloshing under low gravity environment

The numerical simulation of three-dimensional large amplitude liquid sloshing in cylindrical container was discussed. The ALE (Arbitrary Lagrange-Euler) kinematic description was introduced into the finite element fractional step method. The corresponding discrete numerical equations were developed by Galerkin weighted residual method afterwards. The boundary condition about free-surface tension was represented in the form of weak integration. The formulations to calculate the normal vectors of the mesh points on the three dimensional free surface was presented. Three-dimensional large amplitude liquid sloshing in a cylindrical tank is simulated and some important nonlinear characteristics of three-dimensional nonlinear liquid sloshing were obtained. The numerical results were compared with experimental results and the effectiveness of the method conducted in this paper was demonstrated.