Testing and calculations of the motion of a model ship with a direct-flow wave propulsor

Abstract

A new design of the wave propulsor is presented. In this design the thrust mechanism is due to the interaction between the waves and the ship structure elements rather than to ship’s motions. To verify the possibility of using a rigidly fixed inclined plate as the ship wave propulsor a model catamaran was constructed in the Institute of Mechanics of Moscow State University. The effect of the upwave motion of the ship, whose mean velocity is a nonmonotonic function of the wavelength, is studied. As the plate edge pierces the water surface, the ship starts to move in the opposite direction, that is, downwave. The experimentally observable effects are also revealed in the numerical simulation using the XFlow software package which involves the meshless lattice Boltzmann method. On the basis of the calculated results it is shown that the upwave motion effect is due to a variation in the hydrostatic force component in the case of wave breakdown.