Numerical scrutiny of the influence of side hulls arrangement on the motion of a Trimaran vessel in regular waves through CFD analysis

Abstract

Sea environmental conditions such as waves and winds influence several parameters associated with the performance characteristics of Trimaran vessels such as speed, sailing safety, and dynamic forces acting on the structure. On the other hand, the desirable performance of the Trimarans in different sea conditions has attracted the attention of many researchers. However, there remains one of the important issues associated with the design of Trimaran, which is the arrangement of the lateral side hulls, which can help improve its performance. Accordingly, in the current paper, the motion of this type of vessel is numerically investigated for different longitudinal and transversal hull positioning using finite volume method in Flow-3D software. To this end, vessel's motion is examined in the presence of regular waves and at different wave encounter angles. In addition to the optimization of the side hulls location, the dynamics of a Trimaran and its sensitivity to different sea conditions and vessel speed are studied. The computed results show that Trimaran vessels have suitable dynamics with lower longitudinal side body and large transversal distances.

An Experimental Study on the Effect of the Side Hull Symmetry on the Resistance Performance of a Wave-Piercing Trimaran

“…They compared the results obtained from the developed method with towing tank test data and the CFD simulations and reported that RREM can provide acceptable resistance estimation for Froude numbers higher than 0.4 with a low computational cost. On the other side, using the finite volume method in Flow-3D software, Ghadimi et al (2019) numerically investigated the motion of trimaran for different longitudinal and transversal hull positioning. The vessel's motion was also examined in the presence of regular waves and at different wave encounter angles.…”

Bow shape modification through multi-objective hydrodynamic optimization: Methodology comparison between CAD-based FreeForm Deformation and Mesh-based Radial Basis Function approach

“…[1][2][3] Also, some numerical and experimental studies about seakeeping performance of trimarans have been performed in the past decades. 4,5 However, limited research has been conducted about hullform optimization and multiobjective hydrodynamic problems, especially for novel and complex multihull ships. 6 Researchers in the field of ship hydrodynamics have conducted miscellaneous Simulation-Based Design (SBD) studies.…”

Added resistance and seakeeping performance of trimarans in oblique waves

“…Sato et al (2006) presented their CFD simulating results of heave, pitch and roll for a trimaran in oblique waves with small steepness, and demonstrated seakeeping performance of their trimaran was better than the mono hull. Ghadimi et al (2019) studied the effects of side hulls arrangement on the heave, roll and pitch motions of a trimaran, also subjected to linear oblique waves, by carrying out CFD simulations. Very recently, Nowruzi et al (2020a and2020b) investigated responses of a trimaran in head waves numerically and experimentally.…”