Computational fluid dynamics analysis of a ship’s side launching in restricted waters

Abstract

In the presence of a highly complex phenomenon during a ship’s side launching, a more reliable approach to predict the launching performance is thus required. To achieve the objective, a Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation is proposed to obtain more accurate results. Several parameters such as various angles and lengths of the sliding platforms have been taken into account in the simulation which was aimed at providing an insight into their dependencies on the ship’s side launching performance, mainly quantified as the ship’s tipping time. Computational simulations revealed that an increase of the platform’s angle from 3° to 4° had led to an increase in the launching speed percentage by 17.9%, which consequently resulted in faster tipping time of about 21.4% compared to the increase of the platform’s angle from 4° to 5°. However, opposite results were shown as the tipping time became slower by 22.2% and 9.1% due to the increase of d/L ratios from 0.13 to 0.18 and from 0.18 to 0.23, respectively. It is generally concluded that increasing the platform’s angle and decreasing the d/L ratios can result in faster tipping time. With regards to the CFD results, these preliminary findings can act as best practice guidelines, especially for naval architect engineers.