This must surely be a wide topic to explore in any depth. For example, take an approximately rectangular bowl of the type often used for washing dishes in a kitchen sink, half fill with water, slosh gently from side to side and rest on surface. Several seconds later, the flow will have concentrated at the corners, where it commences to slop over the edge. It's easy to see how on a much larger scale similar effects can have unpredicted consequences! WFL On 7/30/18, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
Here's the basic definition from the linked article:
----- The free surface effect is a mechanism which can cause a watercraft to become unstable and capsize.
It refers to the tendency of liquids — and of unbound aggregates of small solid objects, like seeds, gravel, or crushed ore, whose behavior approximates that of liquids — to move in response to changes in the attitude of a craft's cargo holds, decks, or liquid tanks in reaction to operator-induced motions (or sea states caused by waves and wind acting upon the craft). -----
That certainly sounds like the description of the phenomenon in *practical* terms.
But for anyone interested in what is the basic thing going on in math or physics, it's *so vague* that it's not much help:
"The free surface effect is the tendency for [lots of things] to move in response to [lots of other things] [caused by motion of a vessel] [which itself may be caused by ... lots of things]"
—Dan
----- ... free surface effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_surface_effect
..... -----
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