Combining numerical and experimental methods to explain ship-bank interactions - MASHCON7

Bank effects refer to the suction and repulsion forces a ship experiences when sailing near a bank. Recently, various factors have driven the maritime community to gain a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. In inland waterways, increasing traffic and repeated low-water episodes result in ships operating in increasingly confined environment, leading to stronger interactions with banks and other ships. This paper compares experimental and numerical methods in a straightforward test case involving a representative 135m inland waterway ship sailing along a vertical bank. The study examines the total loads and squat of the ship at various distances to the bank and under-keel clearances, ranging from 300% to 20%. It also verifies several new functionalities in the MARIN in-house CFD package ReFRESCO, which can be used for calculations of complex scenarios involving ships navigating in confined and shallow water.