A viscous investigation on the hydrodynamic coefficients and wave loads under the interaction of side-by-side cylinders in regular waves

Abstract

The paper introduces a two-dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes Computational Fluid Dynamics (RANS CFD) model to investigate the effects of adjacently floating bodies on the hydrodynamic coefficients and wave loads acting on these bodies. The analysis considers two square cylinders with a narrow gap in way of the free water surface. The physical significance of subsections of the hydrodynamic coefficient matrix becomes evident when comparing coefficients obtained from oscillating-oscillating versus oscillating-fixed models. This understanding is significant, particularly in applications where only specific portions of the hydrodynamic coefficient matrix are utilized, such as in ship-ice collision scenarios (Jiang et al., 2023a). The correlation between wave loads and wave elevations reveals that the sway force and roll moment are associated with the disparity in wave elevation at both sides of each cylinder, while heave forces correlate with the averaged wave elevation on both sides of each cylinder. It is concluded that hydrodynamic interactions are sensitive to the displacement of a floater and accordingly can dominate added mass and damping effects.