On damaged ship motion and capsizing in beam waves due to sudden water ingress using the RANS method

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics was used to solve the problem of damaged ship behaviour in waves when sudden water ingress occurs. The computational model was based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations combined with the volume-of-fluid free-surface capturing scheme. Both the sliding interface and dynamic layering techniques were adopted to handle the mesh update in the numerical simulation. To validate its performance, this method was first applied to three test cases, including wave generation, roll decay of a damaged frigate DTMB-5415 in calm water and frigate motion in regular beam waves. The numerical results agree with the theoretical and experimental results. Then, the cases of sudden water flooding of the frigate in beam waves were studied. Discussions were focused on the effect of the damage occurrence timing, compartment arrangement and wave height on the flooding process and ship motion. The mechanism of a damaged ship capsizing in waves was partly explained.