Violent sloshing induced by excitation with large amplitudes or resonant frequencies may result in structural damage of the liquid-tank or even the overturning of the liquid cargo transport system. Therefore, impermeable and permeable vertical baffles were investigated numerically to suppress sloshing. The numerical simulations were based on the finite element method and arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) method. The numerical model was verified by the available experimental data, numerical results and linear theoretical results. Based on the study of the effects of impermeable baffle height, amplitude and frequency of excitation on sloshing, the effects of baffle permeability on sloshing were investigated. Importantly, a critical permeability coefficient that was most effective to suppress sloshing was found. In addition, the maximum flow velocities in the tank with a baffle of small permeability coefficient were smaller than those in the tank with an impermeable baffle. While, the maximum flow velocities under a baffle of large permeability coefficient were larger than those in the tank with an impermeable baffle. Vortices were observed in the whole region of the baffle, tank bottom, tank walls and the free surface in the tank with a permeable baffle.

Sloshing is associated with the structural safety of liquid storage vessel. Installing the baffles inside the containers would be beneficial for the mitigating the damage due to the severe sloshing. In this study, an innovative type of double-side curved baffle was proposed to evaluate its effect on reducing sloshing in a rectangular tank under surge and pitch excitation. For comparison with conventional baffles, effects of the vertical baffle and the T-type baffle on mitigating sloshing were also studied experimentally and numerically by analyzing the free surface wave elevation as well as the hydrodynamic pressure on the tank wall. The effective stress at the double-side curved baffle along the height direction of the baffle is much smaller than that at the T-type baffle although they have the same mitigation effect on sloshing wave heights. The sloshing-induced effective stress on the double-side curved baffles was analyzed by varying their radian. Findings show that the effective stress on the baffle tends to decrease with the increase in the radian. The velocity field was presented to observe effect of the baffles on sloshing with the aid of ADINA and laboratory experiments conducted on a hexapod motion platform.