Modeling of liquid sloshing with application in robotics and automation

Liquid sloshing is a free surface flow phenomenon with particular impact in applications such as dynamics of vehicles, ships or aircrafts (e.g. sloshing in tanks), solutions for vibration damping (e.g. tuned liquid mass dampers), as well as in industrial automation and robotic systems (e.g. handling of liquid-filled vessels). Whether sloshing effects are utilized to reduce vibrations or, on the contrary, introduce disturbing forces to the system, the understanding of the liquid sloshing dynamics is crucial to obtain the respective desired system behavior. To this end, due to the complex dynamic effects, numerical methods are vital means for analysis and optimization. In the present work, we focus on the transport and handling of liquid-filled containers in the context of robotics and automation, analyzed using the method Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). The properties and potential of the chosen numerical approach are investigated and evaluated by examples from literature, and several extensions over conventional SPH implementations are proposed in order to enhance accuracy and robustness.