Abstract
A nautical port is an aerodynamically complex built-up area. The wind forces on ships in ports can be very different from those at open sea. Knowledge of the wind conditions in ports and of the wind forces acting on ships in ports are essential for safe maneuvering and mooring. This paper presents a case study in which wind forces on a large cruise ship moored at the quay of the Rotterdam Cruise Terminal are determined by 3D steady RANS simulations. The simulated wind speeds and wind directions are validated by on-site measurements. A previous study in which simulated wind forces on a container ship were validated with wind-tunnel tests, is also mentioned here to justify the selection of computational parameters for the case study. Near to the Cruise Terminal quay various high-rise buildings exist that can influence the wind loads on the ship. It is shown that the presence of the high-rise buildings can yield locally amplified surface pressure, but that, due to the large size of the ship, the net horizontal force decreases. However, the net vertical upward force increases. For smaller ships, nearby high-rise buildings could yield an increase in both horizontal and vertical forces.
Highlights
Most nautical ports are situated in an aerodynamically complex environment with large spatial changes in aerodynamic roughness length and significant local temporal changes in geometry by the presence of large ships, moored and sailing in various positions
Cruise ships and container ships are similar in that they are both characterized by large overall sizes and by the fact that the majority of the ship’s lateral surfaces are situated above the waterline, yielding a large windage area, which increases the contribution of the wind loads to the total loads on the ship
Before averaging the 10-min wind speed ratios in each wind direction sector, the following data were manually removed: (1) events with Uref lower than 5 m/s (Pasquill, 1961) to exclude thermal effects and only focus on high wind speed conditions, which are those relevant for the present study; (2) data with Uref from the wind direction sectors 60 and 150, for which the reference measurement position was in the wake of nearby high-rise buildings; (3) data sampled while ships were berthed at the quay because these ships influenced the measurements and because the validation study would be performed without berthed ships; (4) data with wind speed measurements showing strong wind direction fluctuations indicative of their position in a von Karman vortex street behind nearby buildings
Summary
Most nautical ports are situated in an aerodynamically complex environment with large spatial changes in aerodynamic roughness length and significant local temporal changes in geometry by the presence of large ships, moored and sailing in various positions. Such a study requires the employment of high-resolution CFD simulations validated with experimental data This is the main goal of the present paper in which wind forces on a cruise ship (the Oasis of the Seas) moored at the quay of the Rotterdam. A previous study by Janssen et al (2017), in which wind forces on a container ship in open sea-like conditions were determined by 3D steady RANS simulations and validated by WT tests (by Andersen, 2013), is reported here to justify the use of the steady RANS approach for evaluation the forces This previous study guided the level of geometrical simplification to be adopted for the cruise ship Oasis of the Seas moored at the quay of the Cruise Terminal of the Port of Rotterdam, and it indicated the computational settings and parameters required to obtain accurate simulation results.
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