Estimation of Current Loads on Offshore Vessels Using CFD

  • Published : 2006.03.01

Abstract

Current loads acting on offshore vessels are important for predicting the hydrodynamic and structural responses of the vessels. It is also true for analyzing the behavior of moored systems under the action of ocean current. Unfortunately there are few standardized current load coefficients for offshore vessels and it is extremely difficult to be applied to arbitrary hull shapes, if any. Therefore current load coefficients for three hull shapes are calculated in this study using a CFD code, which is well known in the shipbuilding industry. In order to validate the present approach, a typical VLCC is taken as numerical example and resulting current coefficients are compared with experiment together with the OCIMF data. The comparison shows a good agreement in the qualitative sense. Two additional models considered herein are a shuttle tanker and a FPSO under deepwater condition $(WD/T{\geq}6)$. The present numerical approach may be utilized for practical design of offshore vessels.

Keywords

References

  1. Fluent5 User's Guide. 1998. Fluent Incorporated
  2. Fluent5 Tutorial Guide. 1998. Fluent Incorporated
  3. Ito Y. and N. Kazuhiro. 2002. Unstructured Mesh Generation for Viscous Flow Computations. Proc of 11th International Meshing Roundtable, New York, pp 367-378
  4. Kim W.-J., D.-H. Kim and S.-H. Van. 2000. A Study on the Turbulence Flow Calculation near the Merchant Ship using the Finite Volume Method, Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea, Vol 37, No 4, pp 19-30
  5. Kim W.-J., D.-H. Kim and S.-H. Van. 2002. Computational Study on the Turbulence Flows around Modern Tanker Hull Forms. Int. J of Numerical Methods in Fluids, Vol 38, No 4, pp 377-406 https://doi.org/10.1002/fld.230
  6. Larsson L., F. Stern, V. Bertram. 2000. Gothenburg 2000. A Work Shop on Numerical Ship Hydrodynamics, Gothenburg, Sweden
  7. Prediction of Wind and Current Loads on VLCCs(2nd edition). 1994. Oil Companies International Marine Forum
  8. Wurtzler K.-E., R.-F. Tomaro and F.-C. Witzeman. 2000. Analysis of Three Unstructured Grid Techniques From a User's Perspective. Proc of the 7th International Conference on Numerical Grid Generation in Computational Field Simulation, Whistler, pp 357-366
  9. Yun J.-D., M.-C. Ryu and Y.-S. Kim. 2001. Calculations of Viscous Flow Field near the Hull using a Commercial CFD Program, Fluent, Proc of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea, Seoul, pp 279-283