Numerical Study of Phase Change Influence on Wave Impact Loads in LNG Tanks on Floating Structures

Understanding the physics of sloshing wave impacts is necessary for the improvement of sloshing assessment methodology based on sloshing model tests, for LNG membrane tanks on floating structures. The phase change between natural gas and liquefied natural gas is one of the physical phenomena involved during a LNG wave impact but is not taken into account during sloshing model tests. In this paper, some recent numerical and analytical works on the influence of phase change are summarized and discussed. For the impact of an ideally shaped wave, phase change influences two different steps of the impact in different ways: during the gas escape phase, phase change leads to a higher impact velocity; for entrapped gas pockets, phase change causes a reduction of the pressure in the gas pocket. However, this influence is quantitatively small. The generalization to more realistic wave shapes (including e.g. liquid aeration) should be the focus of future works.