Surge Resistance Identification of Inland Vessels by Computational Fluid Dynamics

Inland vessels play a vital role in inland freight transportation, nevertheless, they currently suffer from the competition by road and rail transport. Therefore, augmenting their motion control - with the future possibility of unmanned barges in mind - could increase their competitiveness and induce a paradigm shift in the inland freight transport sector. However, there has been relatively little analysis of the manoeuvring characteristics of small inland vessels or self-propelled barges. Consequently, this study uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to identify a single-variable second-order surge resistance model for a typical European Class (CEMT) type I vessel. This identification method applied the OpenFOAM software to solve the Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) equations by deploying a Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach and a k-omega turbulence model. This CFD methodology was first benchmarked on a KVLCC2 hull of which experimental data are publicly available to validate the CFD results. Afterwards, this validated numerical approach identified the surge model for the inland CEMT I vessel.