Maneuverability of a vessel using bow thrusters

Abstract

Vessels entering and leaving ports are faced with the challenge of maneuvering due to weather conditions, bad currents, and traffic dues to congestion in the channels near coastal waters. In order to berth or manoeuver properly the use of tugs is necessary which incurs more cost and more turnaround time for the vessel owner. Over the years, bow thrusters have been introduced to aid easy maneuverability despite these conditions in order to eliminate the cost of hiring tugs as well as reduce turnaround time for the vessels. In this project, a 4-blade bow thruster propeller of 500mm diameter was successfully modelled using Solidworks 2021 (CAD) software. Computational flow dynamics (CFD) was done using flow simulation in Solidworks 2021 and 260 iterations was carried out. The velocity at the body of the propeller was found to be 13.67m/s while the velocities at the front and back of the propeller was 6.841m/s. The values for the performance factors were also gotten for a varying range of BT propeller diameters and charts were develop to show the relationship between the propeller diameter and the performance factors necessary for maneuvering a vessel. It can be concluded that the performance factors necessary for maneuvering a vessel is dependent on the diameter of the bow thruster. For further studies, number of thruster to be fitted to the bow or stern of a vessel should be considered for larger vessel sizes.