Experimental-theoretical modelling of the lateral sloshing in rail tankers

The objective of this paper is to describe and to validate a simplified pendulum-analogy model to simulate the interaction of a liquid cargo with its carrying vehicle. The resulting testing rig consists of a rectangular container, spring supported on a two wheelset-bogie having a scale down of 1/10 with respect to a full-size equipment. The testing rig is used to validate a simple pendulum-based, simplified three degree-of-freedom mathematical model of the response of a partially filled container to lateral accelerations. The length of the pendulum is set according to validated methodologies. The resulting mathematical scheme reveals a high correlation with the experimental output, on the order of 99%, while some other performance measures, related to the peak forces and the range of variation of the wheel-rail forces, also show good concordance with the experimental results.