Comparative study of wind resistance of a 2D stack of featured ocean containers and a 3D forty feet unit

ABSTRACT

Previously the effect of configuration of containers as well as wind angle of attack on the wind resistance of a container ship was studied by using simple blocks to represent the containers. However, in field observations, the authors testified large geometric deformations in statistically significant numbers of containers. Using ANSYS CFX, the outer side of the stacking configuration is modelled as a thin plate comprising several bays and tiers. Frictional resistance of the plate with corrugations and damages is compared to that of a flat plate. Moreover, using unsteady RANS with K-ω, SST turbulence model, a computer model of a single featured 3D unit is studied and compared with the simple block. In this case, viscous pressure drag is significant and results for simple block and real container are surprisingly different. In summary, differences in wind resistance between simple blocks and real containers are considerable and must be taken into account in future studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Container ship
• aerodynamic performance
• computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
• deformation
• distortion
• surface roughness

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Messrs. Babakohi, and Karim. from Bahr Gostaresh Hormoz Company who kindly helped us in this work, Mr. Parviz from Bureau Veritas B. Abbas, who helped us for conducting containers survey, and Mrs. F. Mirfasih for editing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Hamed Majidian http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0875-9217

Farhood Azarsina http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4341-6447