Although the rigid body hypothesis is broadly used when studying floating bodies dynamics, it is known that a ship-shaped vessel will have hydroelastic responses. Considering a conventional closed main deck hull in which the ship's length is considerably greater than its breadth, it is expected that the vertical bending moments can represent an important load that must be considered to guarantee structural integrity. Numerical models can be developed to assess the hydroelastic response, but the validation process is necessary. Model tests can be performed to validate the numerical model and require specific considerations to properly represent hydroelastic phenomena, such as having equivalent bending stiffness when compared to the full-scale body. Many experimental facilities that can be used to perform such experiments consist of narrow wave channels, in which the wall effect will influence the model's dynamics. This work implements a Tank Green Function (TGF) to a numerical model developed in Capytaine to represent the wall effect on the body's response. The numerical results were then compared to experimental data from tests in a narrow wave channel and good adherence was found. The validated numerical model can then be used to simulate open-water conditions, so the results can be extrapolated to full scale without the need to perform model tests in an ocean tank in which the wall effect would not be relevant.
Read full abstract