A Numerical Study on the Effect of Various Baffle Systems on Fuel Oil Sloshing in Partially Filled Cargo Tanker Trucks at Cornering Condition

Abstract

Ethiopia imports all fuel, and crude oils from abroad at high-cost, transportation of these fluids has been carried out by using various capacity of road transportation heavy duty truck vehicle. During transportation, sloshing of fuel happens when a vehicle with partially filled fuel tank experiences accelerating, braking or turning. Due to the sloshing, a truck reduces their stability which in turn can cause accidents. Therefore, in order to reduce the sloshing effect inside the tank, there are baffles that are inserted in it. In Ethiopian fuel transporting vehicle have transverse baffles to reduce the sloshing effect only during braking, but at cornering this is not efficient. Therefore, the main aim of this thesis work is studying the effect of various baffle systems on reducing lateral sloshing. These baffle systems design and its arrangement namely; transverse baffles, bottom-mounted longitudinal baffles, upper-mounted longitudinal baffles, longitudinal baffles with two holes and four holes with same(inline) and varying(staggered) hole position arrangements and finally with curved longitudinal baffles were considered for this work. The best baffle configuration and its arrangements for modified-oval tank geometry at 50% and 80% fill levels were attempted in this work, and studied the dynamic analysis of tanker truck. For the numerical analysis, the baffle system and tanker truck are modeled in CATIA V5 and the CFD analysis is carried out in ANSYS Fluent 2021.R2. The simulations are based on the Reynolds Average Navier-Stokes equations with standard SST k-ε as turbulence model together with the volume of a fluid method describing the two-phased flow of both diesel fuel and air in a tanker, and the dynamic analysis is carried out in LS_DYNA to study the stability of truck. When comparing all baffle designs, transverse baffles with four holes longitudinal baffle with hole varying position is found the best baffle types. The greatest reduction of maximum lateral force and roll-moment is 47.76% and 58.66% at 50% fill level, and 58.08% and 22.52% at 80% fill level respectively. Thus, inclusion of these improved design baffle to the case tanker truck will be of paramount importance for improved roll-over stability during cornering.