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SUMMARYAn innovative method of analysis was developed to simulate the non-linear seismic finite-amplitude liquid sloshing in two-dimensional containers. In view of the irregular and time-varying liquid surface, the method employed a curvilinear mesh system to transform the non-linear sloshing problem from the physical domain with an irregular free-surface boundary into a computational domain in which rectangular grids can be analysed by the finite difference method. Non-linearities associated with both the unknown location of the free surface and the high-order differential terms were considered. The Crank-Nicolson time marching scheme was employed and the resulting finite difference algorithm is unconditionally stable and very lightly damped with respect to the temporal co-ordinate. In order to minimize numerical instability caused by the computational dispersion in spatially discretized surface wave, a second-order dissipation term was added to the system to filter out the spurious high-frequency waves. Sloshing effects and structural response were measured in terms of sloshing amplitude, base shear and overturning moment generated by the hydrodynamic pressure of the liquid exerted on the container walls. Simulation results of liquid sloshing induced by earthquake and harmonic base excitations were compared with those of the linear wave theory and the limitations of the latter in assessing the response of seismically excited liquids were addressed.KEY WORDS: liquid sloshing; nonlinear large-amplitude waves; hydrodynamic pressure; seismic response; numerical stability and dissipation; physical and computational domains

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