Coupled vibrations of a partially fluid-filled cylindrical container with an internal body including the effect of free surface waves

Internal bodies (baffles) are used as damping devices to suppress the fluid sloshing motion in fluid-structure interaction systems. An analytical method is developed in the present article to investigate the effects of a rigid internal body on bulging and sloshing frequencies and modes of a cylindrical container partially filled with a fluid. The internal body is a thin-walled and open-ended cylindrical shell that is coaxially and partially submerged inside the container. The interaction between the fluid and the structure is taken into account to calculate the sloshing and bulging frequencies and modes of the coupled system using the Rayleigh quotient, Ritz expansion and Galerkin method. It is shown that the present formulation is an appropriate and new approach to tackle the problem with good accuracy. The effects of fluid level, number of nodal diameters, internal body radius and submergence ratio on the dynamic characteristics of the coupled system are also investigated. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.