Experiments on non-resonant sloshing in a rectangular tank with large amplitude lateral oscillation

Flow of two dimensional nonlinear sloshing in a rigid rectangular tank with free surface is considered. The flow is generated by oscillating the container in a lateral harmonic motion, i.e., d* =A* sin(2 pi f*t*) where d* denotes the displacement of the container externally forced, A* the amplitude of displacement and f* the frequency. Thus, the maximum stroke, S*, of the container for a cycle, measured by a distance from the leftmost to the rightmost location on the container movement, is defined as S* = 2A*. It has performed a sequence of experiments on a variety of S*- and f* -values to investigate large amplitude sloshing flows at off-resonant condition far from the system natural frequency, where large amplitude means that the stroke, S*, of the container movement is comparable with the breadth, L* of the container, i.e., S*/L* similar to O(1) and the excitation acceleration is also comparable with the gravity, i.e., pi(2)(S*f*)(2)/g*similar to O(1). Through PIV experiment, it shows that the flow physics on nonlinear off-resonant sloshing problem can be characterized into a combination of three peculiar sloshing motions: (1) standing wave motions which is similar with those of linear sloshing during run-down process, (2) run-up phenomenon like hydraulic jump along the vertical sidewall at the moment of turn-around of the container and (3) gradually propagating bore motion from one sidewall to the opposite wall which is similar with dam breaking problem. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.