Parametric studies on nickel ore slurry sloshing in a cargo hold by numerical simulations

Abstract

Acted by waves, swing and vibration of the vessel, the granular bulk cargo which contains certain moisture content may liquefy and behave like a fluid in cargo hold. When the liquefaction of the cargo occurs, it can cause the vessel to list or even capsize. In this study, based on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver and non-Newtonian constitutive equations, a numerical model was developed to study the sloshing of nickel ore slurry in a cargo hold. The volume of fluid method was used to capture the movement of the fluid interface. To validate the proposed model, the numerical results were verified by comparison with available experimental data. To fully understand the sloshing behaviour of the nickel ore slurry in the hold, the dimensional analysis was accomplished by using the Buckingham π theorem. Designating the mean sloshing-induced moment amplitude as an indicator, the deduced eight non-dimensional parameters governing the sloshing of the nickel ore slurry in the cargo hold were investigated by two different scaled models. Furthermore, the parametric studies of the excitation frequency, excitation amplitude and depth to width ratio on the sloshing-induced moment are discussed extensively and some conclusions are obtained.