Numerical Studies of Coupling Effect of Sloshing on 3D Ship Motions

The present work describes the development of an approach to study the problem of ship motions coupled with internal sloshing effects. A hybrid solution algorithm is developed that integrates a three-dimensional potential flow solver for ship motions into a viscous flow solver for sloshing loads. A three-dimensional time-domain forward-speed boundary element method (BEM), based on the transient Green's function technique, is employed to capture the external ship hydrodynamics, while the open source finite volume method (FVM)-based solver, OpenFOAM, which incorporates an incompressible multiphase viscous flow model into an interface-capturing volume of fluid (VOF) technique, is employed to capture the internal sloshing hydrodynamics. After the individual solvers are validated against the experiments and other computations available in the literature, the solution from the coupled solver is discussed, and the influence of the coupling effects of sloshing loads on ship motions is brought out.