Swirling against the forcing: evidence of stable counter-directed sloshing waves in orbital-shaken reservoirs

We study the free surface response in a cylindrical container undergoing an elliptic periodic orbit. For small forcing amplitudes and deep liquid layers, we quantify the effect of orbit’s aspect ratio onto the surface dynamics in the vicinity of the fluid system’s lowest natural frequency. We provide experimental evidences of the existence of a frequency range where stable swirling can be either co- or counter-directed with respect to the container’s direction of motion. Our findings are successfully predicted by an inviscid asymptotic model, amended with a heuristic damping.