Breaking wave impact in a boiling liquid

Light fuels, such as natural gas and hydrogen are conveniently transported overseas in cryogenic liquid form, stored in huge containers where the liquid is in thermodynamic equilibrium with its own vapor, i.e., it is a boiling liquid. During shipment, the dynamical container load is shown to be almost exclusively caused by sloshing wave impact. Therefore, to study the influence of phase change on container load, we turn to the Atmosphere facility at Marin (NL), a cylindrical autoclave in which isolated water - water vapor systems can be realized at equilibrium temperatures ranging from 20 °C to 120 °C. In a 12 meter long flume, a soliton is created by means of a wave maker, which is turned into a reproducible breaking wave by an upsloping ramp at the end of the channel. Subsequently, the wave impacts onto a vertical wall, where an array of pressure transducers measures the impact load. At low temperatures, pressures are observed to exceed those measured in water-air systems by at least one order of magnitude, which is traced back to the collapse of a vapor-filled cavity. Finally we discuss the observed differences and qualitatively explain them in terms of a vapor bubble model.