Performances of Different Turbulence Models for Simulating Shallow Water Sloshing in Rectangular Tank

Abstract

Liquid sloshing is a common phenomenon in the transportation of liquid-cargo tanks. Liquid waves lead to fluctuating forces on the tank walls. If these fluctuations are not predicted or controlled, for example, by using baffles, they can lead to large forces and momentums. The volume of fluid (VOF) two-phase numerical model in OpenFOAM open-source software has been widely used to model the liquid sloshing. However, a big challenge for modeling the sloshing phenomenon is selecting a suitable turbulence model. Therefore, in the present study, different turbulence models were studied to determine their sloshing phenomenon prediction accuracies. The predictions of these models were validated using experimental data. The turbulence models were ranked by their mean error in predicting the free surface behaviors. The renormalization group (RNG) k–ε and the standard k–ω models were found to be the best and worst turbulence models for modeling the sloshing phenomena, respectively; moreover, the SST k–ω model and v2-f k-ε results were very close to the RNG k–ε model result.

Keywords

Volume of fluid / Turbulence models / Shallow water sloshing / Free surface / OpenFOAM / Liquid tanks / Renormalization group