An experimental and numerical hydrodynamic study on the Argentinian fishing vessels

Abstract

The purpose of this work is the validation of the hydrodynamic resistance for a small fishing vessel providing more details about the ship’s hydrodynamics. The selected ship is a traditional vessel that has been sailing in Argentina for more than 20 years without a previous numerical resistance evaluation. Because of the absence of previous numerical optimization, the ship might be a non-efficient vessel from a consumption, operating and polluting point of view. For this reason, in order to bring a more detailed evaluation of the flow around this hull, numerical studies are carried out with the open source OpenFOAM code and validated with experimental results obtained at the University of Buenos Aires towing tank. Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) method together with volume of fluid (VOF) are used for the numerical procedure. Once the resistance results are validated, the total resistance coefficient is split into viscous and wave coefficients in order to provide insight into ship hydrodynamics. Pressure distributions on the hull and wave patterns will be also presented for different ship loading conditions, focusing on the flow around the hull that might give information for a future hull optimization.