A Design Method of Inland River Channel Based on Hydrodynamic Response of Ship

Channel is the navigable area for ships in rivers and canals. The analyses of flow details and experiences of engineers are extensively used for the design of channel nowadays, without thorough consideration of the fluid-structure interaction between flow and ships. In this paper, an inland channel design method based on ship hydrodynamic response is proposed. First of all, the secondary development is undertaken based on Fluent for the problem of ship-flow interaction, in which flow domain is simulated by using the finite volume method, and governing equations of ship are embedded through user defined function (UDF) and solved by using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. The dynamic mesh technique is adopted to update the changing computation domains. The hydrodynamic motion response of freely drifting ships in inland waterway is simulated, as well as trajectory. Then, the weighted least square method is used for curve fitting from the drifting trajectories of different ships, by which the channel boundaries are designed. The weight coefficients are obtained through the statistic of sailing frequencies of different ships. Dongliu route with typical navigation obstructions of curve and branch is chosen for the verification of the channel design method. It is found that the channel designed by the method with consideration of ship-flow interaction is consistent with the existing one. Besides, the analyses of flow details and ship responses indicate that ships sailing in this channel can avoid the influences of oblique flow and make use of the energy of flow, which maintains the sailing safety and economy.