Numerical Study on Resistance of a Bulk Carrier Vessel Using CFD Method

Bulk carriers have an important role in international maritime transport. In this paper, we carried out a numerical study on a model of bulk carrier vessel and calculated total resistance of the model. A model of a bulk carrier vessel with length of 2.76 m, breadth of 0.403 m and draught of 0.173 m was selected for numerical modeling. Numerical work was done by commercial CFD software ANSYS FLUENT 13 based on finite volume method (FVM). Applying VOF model, FLUENT solved RANS equations and accordingly, free surface waves around vessel and total resistance were calculated. A fully structured mesh was used which generated in GAMBIT pre-processing software. Numerical solution was done for 5 different speeds from 0.2 to 0.95 m/s. Also, mesh dependency was studied by using four mesh sizes and finally, a mesh with 755,000 hexahedral cells was selected for all speeds. For verification of numerical results, experimental data from test of bulk carrier model were used. Model tests were carried out in towing tank of Galati University in Romania. Moreover, free surface waves from numerical study were compared with waves captured from model tests. The results showed that CFD results had an error up to 12 % relative to model test results and wave patterns around vessel were very similar to that of model test.