Moment of inertia of liquid in a tank

ABSTRACTIn this study, the inertial properties of fully filled liquid in a tank were studied based on the potential theory. The analytic solution was obtained for the rectangular tank, and the numerical solutions using Green's 2nd identity were obtained for other shapes. The inertia of liquid behaves like solid in recti-linear acceleration. But under rotational acceleration, the moment of inertia of liquid becomes small compared to that of solid. The shapes of tank investigated in this study were ellipse, rectangle, hexagon, and octagon with various aspect ratios. The numerical solutions were compared with analytic solution, and an ad hoc semi-analytical approximate formula is proposed herein and this formula gives very good predictions for the moment of inertia of the liquid in a tank of several different geometrical shapes. The results of this study will be useful in analyzing of the motion of LNG/LPG tanker, liquid cargo ship, and damaged ship.