Benjamin Dollet

Sloshing describes the oscillations of liquids in reservoirs. It is often detrimental and can lead e.g. to coffee spilling, or to destabilisation of tankers and spacecrafts, especially in its large-amplitude, nonlinear regimes. Therefore, understanding and optimising its damping is of primary importance for applications. Presenting experimental measurements and the associated theoreticaI modeling, I will discuss two ways to increase sloshing damping by interfacial effects: either using a foam layer, or, in the case of partial wetting, tuning the contact angle hysteresis. Interestingly, these two strategies lead to novel nonlinearities which, contrary to the usual large-amplitude effects, manifest themselves all the most that sloshing amplitude is small, leading to singularities like the finite-time arrest of the oscillations of the liquid/air interface.