Free vibration analysis of baffled liquid-storage tanks by the structural-acoustic finite element formulation

In fluid-structure interaction systems, baffles as a dynamic damping device are being widely used to suppress the fluid sloshing motion. Meanwhile, natural and dynamic behaviors of such systems are significantly influenced by the baffle parameters, such as the baffle number, the installation location, the inner-hole diameter and the liquid fill height. This paper intends to numerically investigate the parametric eigen characteristics, by the coupled structural-acoustic finite element method (FEM), of baffled cylindrical liquid-storage tank. According to the symmetric two-field formulation, a test FEM program is developed, in which the reduced integration for avoiding the shear and membrane locking and the modified shear correction factor as well as degenerated 8- and 6-node shell elements and 3-D trilinear acoustic elements are used. Through the comparison with the available analytic solutions of no-baffled axisymmetric tank, the validity of the test program and theoretical work is verified. Next, with the verified test FEM program, various combinations of major baffle parameters are intensively examined, in order for the parametric baffle effects on the natural frequency of baffled tanks. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.