Parametric Resonance of a Fishing Vessel With and Without Anti-Roll Tank: An Experimental and Numerical Study

Parametric resonance (PR) in roll is of concern for fishing vessels, especially in head-sea waves. Here the effect of passive anti-roll free-surface tank is investigated experimentally and numerically on realistic fishing-vessel geometry at zero forward speed. On the numerical side, the onboard tank is simulated using an open source computational fluid dynamic (CFD) development platform, OpenFOAM (Open Field Operation and Manipulation). The internal flow solver is coupled with the seakeeping solver, which is based on the weakly nonlinear method proposed in [1]. Experimentally, two different relevant scenarios were examined: 1) a 2D rectangular tank with shallow-water filling depth was forced to oscillate in roll and the loads induced on the tank were measured; 2) a fishing vessel was tested in a towing tank, prescribing regular head-sea waves. The vessel was examined both without and with anti-roll tanks and a mooring-line system was designed so to control the horizontal motions with limited effect on the parametric occurrence. The experiments on the fishing vessel are considered to assess the seakeeping solver. Both model tests and numerical results confirmed the effectiveness of an on-board tank in avoiding PR. For the examined cases with tank, the parametric resonance did not occur without forcing an initial roll. Moreover, the initial roll amplitude and roll phase relative to the heave motion matter for triggering the instability.