Numerical Research on Hydrodynamic Force Acting on a Ship Navigating in Water Adjoining Bridge

As the larger ship scale and more bridges above navigation channels, the bridge piers pose great threat to the safety of ships and the bridges. When navigating in bridge area, the track of ship should be controlled to ensure safety. Interactive hydrodynamic forces are produced on ship because of the bridge piers. In addition to the complex flow conditions in bridge area and the characteristics of interactive hydrodynamic forces, it is difficult to control the shipping tracks. Using the method of computational fluid dynamics (CFD), solves viscous controlling equations, stimulates the viscous flow in bridge area near ships and piers, calculates the interactive hydrodynamic forces of ships navigating in different places near the piers and analyzes the characteristics of interactive hydrodynamic forces of the hull. Taking the flow of bridge area into account, the interference hydrodynamic forces are calculated and the influence of different flow speed is analyzed. The result shows that the interactive forces of pier to ship are closely related to the relative position of ship and pier. The pier interactive hydrodynamic forces acting on hull are notable when the ship is navigating within certain range of area near the pier, and the pier interactive hydrodynamic forces are related to the velocity of the current in bridge area and ship's course.