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FULL-SCALE SELF-PROPULSION SIMULATION FOR AN INLAND CATAMARAN FERRY

Săndița Păcuraru

Abstract

An important European transport sector is represented by the river ferries, which have a tremendous impact on the population and economy of the riparian countries. The navigation across the Danube River is increasing significantly in the past decade due to the limited number of bridges available in the Romanian part of the river. If the Romanian sector of the Danube would be analysed, the total fuel oil needed is between 0.92 to 1.96 million tons per year, which means a CO quantity of 23 to 49 tons per year, and other pollutants. Taking this into consideration, the need for low-emission transport means with renewable energy has become critical in our days. The new design, presented in this article, integrates a fully electric propulsion system, in this way the emissions are practically reduced to zero and wind, solar or hydro power are absolutely viable to be used as energy sources. The ship is based on a catamaran hull concept which involves several significant advantages, in comparison to an equivalent mono-hull: increased transverse stability, essential for this type of ship with transverse ro-ro loading; increased deck cargo area, necessary for ro-ro cargo; increased maneuverability, especially in low speed range, due to location of the two propulsion lines. A CFD study is proposed in this paper to estimate the self-propulsion performance of a new-design inland catamaran ferry. Rigorous numerical simulations are performed to predict ship resistance, free-surface and self-propulsion performance. Closure to turbulence is achieved by making use of k-? SST model, the free-surface is solved through an air-water interface based on volume of fluid technique, while the propeller is modelled based on a simplified body-force method using an infinite-blade actuator disk approach. For the sake of numerical consistency, a systematic grid convergence study based on Richardson Extrapolation method is performed on three different systematically varied grid resolutions, as an attempt of predicting the numerical uncertainties in the obtained results. This study investigates different issues that can provide valuable information for naval architects such as ship resistance in different speeds, self-propulsion prediction, hull propeller interaction and local flow in the propeller vicinity.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2019/4.1/s17.081

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