On sloshing in a container with moving wall

The research on the coupled frequencies of a fluid-structure system comprised of a container with a moving wall partially filled with water (Figure 1) was presented in two papers by Lu et al. and Chai et al., but their solutions are different. The aim of this letter is to compare them. The fluid is incompressible and inviscid, and the structure is a mass m [kg m(-1)] in translation, connected to the Galilean reference by a spring of stiffness k [N m(-2)]; these characteristics are given per unit length in the z direction. The authors linearized the equations and looked for a potential-flow solution for the fluid motion. They obtain the same set of equations. (C) 2000 Academic Press.