Abstract
Enclosure aquaculture is a healthy and ecological aquaculture pattern developed in recent years to relieve the pressure due to the wild fish stock decline and water pollution. The object of this paper was a floating rope enclosure, which mainly consisted of floaters, mooring lines, sinkers and a net. In order to optimize mooring design factors, the hydrodynamic responses of the floating rope enclosure with different mooring systems in combined wave-current were investigated by experimental and numerical methods. Physical model experiments with a model scale of 1:50 were performed to investigate the hydrodynamic characteristics of a floating rope enclosure with 12 mooring lines. Based on the lumped mass method, the numerical model was established to investigate the effects of mooring design factors on the mooring line tension, force acting on the bottom, and the volume retention of the floating rope enclosure. Through the analysis of numerical and experimental results, it was found that the maximum mooring line tension of the floating rope enclosure occurs on both sides of the windward. Increasing the number of mooring lines on the windward side is helpful to reduce the maximum mooring line tension. Waves and current both have an influence on the mooring line tension; in contrast, currents have a more obvious effect on the mooring line tension than waves. However, the influence of the wave period on the maximum mooring line tension is small. The force endured by the bottom of the floating rope enclosure also changes periodically with the wave period. Yet, the maximum force endured by the bottom of floating rope enclosure occurred at the windward and leeward of the structure. The volume retention of the floating rope enclosure increased with the increasing amount of mooring lines.
Highlights
There are many types of marine aquaculture structures widely used to produce more intensive production to meet the rapidly growing demand
This study mainly focused on the maximum net tension force acting on the bottom and volume retention, which provide the basis for the design of the mooring system of a floating rope enclosure
The numerical results of mooring line tension distribution, force acting on the bottom of the structure, maximum mooring line tension, and the volume retention are the main focuses for this part
Summary
There are many types of marine aquaculture structures widely used to produce more intensive production to meet the rapidly growing demand. The interaction between waves and nets and net deformations are both important research contents for net-based structures; a number of experiments have been carried out on these subjects [4,5,6,7,8] Both the mesh geometry and net solidity have an influence on the hydrodynamic load of the net. Numerical simulation as a research method has been used by many scholars to study the hydrodynamic characteristics of a net-based structure. The study on the hydrodynamic characteristics of net-based structures exposed to waves and current is more practical for engineering [1,19,20,21]. This paper is concerned with the hydrodynamic characteristics of floating rope enclosure with different mooring systems by means of a physical model experiment and numerical simulation.
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