Numerical simulation of large commercial ship navigation on Paraná river, Argentina

Abstract

In recent years, the large commercial ships (Post-Panamax) started sailing the

Argentinean waterway of the Paraná River. So that, the research project of the FICH-UNL called "Analysis of Hydro-Sedimentological Effects Caused by River Navigation on Argentinean Waterways” decided to use the computational simulation as one of tools research to study the hydraulic and sedimentological effects caused by the navigation of these ships on the morphology of the rivers of the Argentine waterway.

One of the premises of this work was to explore the capabilities of the Adapco STAR CCM + CFD code to simulate the ship navigation in calm water in order to measure the heights of waves generated (among others), validating its results with the experimental one (physical model of large ships navigation carried out at the Hydraulics Laboratory of FICH- UNL).

Navigation situation simulated: JAPAN Bulk Carrier (JBC; Lpp: 280 m, Bwl: 45 m and D: 25 m) with a service speed of 22 knots (11,3m/s) navigating against a flow stream with velocity of 2m/s (habitual situation of JBC navigation on Paraná River).

The numerical modeling reproduced the navigation ship in scale (1/36.7), using a Computational Fluid Dynamics code (CFD) by finite-volume method (VOF). A study of mesh dependence was performed to analyze the convergence model. A mesh of hexahedral cells was used in the Volume of Fluid (VOF) Multiphase Model for waves and dumping waves. The turbulence was modeled by a k-Epsilon model from Reynolds Average. Wave

damping was used in the lateral walls of the domain.