A boundary element study for evaluation of the effects of the rigid baffles on liquid sloshing in rigid containers

In this paper, the sloshing response of liquid in a two dimensional rigid rectangular tank with rigid baffles is investigated using boundary element technique. A baffle is a supplementary structural element which supplies a kind of passive control on the effects of ground shaking. The complicated liquid domain is divided into two simple sub-domains so that the liquid velocity potential in each liquid sub-domain is specified employing Green’s theorem, and the walls and free surface boundary conditions are applied. The liquid region is modeled by internal quadrilateral boundary elements, which reduce the three-dimensional fluid problem into a two-dimensional-surface one. The validity of the present algorithm is assessed through the comparison with the accessible results for the rectangular tank without baffle and then developed to the solution of tanks with rigid baffles. Several parametric studies are performed to show the liquid sloshing effects in terms of the slosh frequencies and free surface displacement by consideration of the effects of baffle parameters such as position and dimension. From these analyses, it may be concluded that in the special case of long-period ground earthquake, the baffle device amplifies the dynamic responses of liquid tank which may be interpreted by the fact that the predominant period of the ground shaking is set at the fundamental natural sloshing periods.