Experimental Study on the Effect of Vertical Baffles on Liquid Sloshing Noise in a Partially Filled Rectangular Tank under Periodic Excitation

Liquid sloshing is becoming a major source of noise in hybrid vehicles during acceleration/deceleration and braking. This noise, which is due to the movement of a liquid free surface is causing annoyance to the passengers and negatively affecting the perceived quality of the vehicle. Sloshing phenomenon can be controlled using baffles in the tank. But a proper study is required on the configuration of baffles inside tank such that the sloshing noise is reduced. This paper presents an experimental study on the effect of vertical baffles on sloshing noise in a partially filled rectangular tank under longitudinal periodic excitation. The experimental setup can emulate different sloshing regimes namely- Planar, Non-planar and Chaotic in the tank by exciting it at different frequencies. Experiments were done to understand the effect of baffle position and baffle height on the sloshing noise generation mechanism for various fill levels in different sloshing regimes. From the parametric studies, it is observed that the baffles are more effective in suppressing the sloshing noise when they are located near tank walls and positioned close to the liquid free surface.