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The flow characteristics around bridge piers under the impact of a ship

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Abstract

The complicated flow structure around the pier threatens the safe navigation of ships. This paper studies the mechanism of the flow with a ship around the pier, passing or not passing and with consideration of the interval between the ship and the pier. The flow field model and the moving ship model are constructed by the six degrees of freedom (6DOF) solver combined with the virtual unit immersed boundary method and the level set method, both of which are based on the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. The simulation results show that the ship significantly influences the flow around the pier, increasing the flow velocity by 50% to 140%. Away from the bridge pier, the cross-flow velocity decreases. The cross-flow velocity near the side of the pier also increases but in the opposite direction. The ship is affected by the negative yaw moment because of the reverse cross-flow between the pier and the ship. The size of the ship has an important impact on the extent of the affected flow areas but the velocity distribution is roughly in the same shape. The results show double impacts of ship and pier should be considered when determining the safe area of navigation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

    Yan-fen Geng, Hua-qiang Guo & Xing Ke

Authors
  1. Yan-fen Geng
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  2. Hua-qiang Guo
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  3. Xing Ke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yan-fen Geng.

Additional information

Project supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB1600400), the Jiangsu Province Transportation Science and Technology Project (Grant No. 2018Y20).

Biography: Yan-fen Geng (1978-), Female, Ph. D., Associate Professor

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Geng, Yf., Guo, Hq. & Ke, X. The flow characteristics around bridge piers under the impact of a ship. J Hydrodyn 32, 1165–1177 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42241-020-0082-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42241-020-0082-5

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