Abstract
The interaction between two side-by-side floating vessels has been a subject of interest in recent years due floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) developments. The safety and operability of these facilities are affected by the free-surface elevation in the narrow gap between the two vessels as well as the relative motions between the vessels. It is common practice in the industry to use potential flow models to estimate the free-surface responses in the gap under various wave conditions. However, it is well-known that any potential flow models require calibration of viscous damping, and model tests are carried out to provide a platform to calibrate the potential flow models.
To improve beyond the potential flow models, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models will be required. However, the large computational efforts required render the conventional CFD approaches impractical for simulations of wave-structure interactions over a long duration. In this paper, a developed coupled solver between potential flow and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model is presented. The potential flow model is based on High-Order Spectral method (HOS), while the CFD model is based on fully nonlinear, viscous and two phase StarCCM+ solver. The coupling is achieved using a forcing zone to blend the outputs from the HOS into the StarCCM+ solver. Thus, the efficient nonlinear long time simulation of arbitrary input wave spectrum by HOS can be transferred to the CFD domain, which can reduce the computational domain and simulation time.
In this paper, we make reference to the model experiments conducted by Chua et al. (2018), which consist of two identical side-by-side barges of 280 m (length) × 46 m (breadth) × 16.5 m (draught) tested in regular and irregular wave conditions. Our intention is to numerically reproduce the irregular wave conditions and the resulting barge-barge interactions. We first simulate the actual irregular wave conditions based on wave elevations measured by the wave probes using the HOS solver. The outputs are subsequently transferred to the CFD solver through a forcing zone in a 2D computational domain for comparison of the irregular wave conditions without the barges present. Subsequently, a 3D computational domain is set up in the CFD with fixed side-by-side barges modelled, and the interaction under irregular waves is simulated and compared with the experiments. We will demonstrate the applicability of the HOS-StarCCM+ coupling tool in terms of accuracy, efficiency as well as verification and validation of the results.
Numerical Modelling of the Nearfield Longitudinal Wake Profiles of a High-Speed Prismatic Planing Hull
