Investigation of Moonpool Effects on Hydrodynamic Coefficients of Supporter vehicle, Using Experimental and Numerical Methods

Moonpool is a wetted opening, located near the mid-ship, which allows researchers take their tools and vehicles into the water in a safer and more protected area. In this paper, in order to investigate the effect of the moon pool on the increase of motion resistance of the Supporter surface vessel, a set of experiments at various Froude number in the range of 0.139-0.370 are conducted in the IUT towing tank, using a scaled model of 1:37.2. Experiments are conducted for two cases; when the model has a moonpool near the mid-ship and when the moonpool entrance at the bottom of the ship is closed. The increase in the motion resistance of the vessel model is measured. The obtained results are compared with those obtained by HSVA towing tank, which used a 1:17.2 scaled model. A CFD simulation is also conducted, using Ansys-CFX. A two phase flow model is used to simulate the steady state motion of the vessel. The domain is consisted of water and air fluids. The results showed that introducing an open moonpool increases the ship resistance significantly.