ALE FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF NONLINEAR SLOSHING PROBLEMS BASED ON FLUID VELOCITY POTENTIAL

摘要

Based on fluid velocity potential, an ALE finite element formulation for the analysis of nonlinear sloshing problems has been developed. The ALE kinematical description is introduced to move the computational mesh independently of fluid motion, and the container-fixed noninertial coordinate system is employed to establish the governing equations so that the mesh is needed to be updated in this coordinate system only. This leads to a very simple mesh moving algorithm which makes it easy to trace the motion of the moving boundaries and the free surface without producing undesirable distortion of the computational mesh. The finite element method and finite difference method are used spacewise and timewise, respectively. A numerical example involving either forced horizontal oscillation or forced pitching oscillation of the fluid-filled container is presented to illustrate the effectiveness and the robustness of the method. In addition, this work can be extended for the fluid-structure interaction problems.