Drag Coefficients of Stock and Stockless Anchors

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, collisions between anchors and submarine power cables have attracted increasing research interest because of the rapid growth of offshore wind farms. Since the drag coefficients have not been calculated, conservative values have been assumed and used to simulate collisions. This conservative estimation is likely to result in unnecessarily heavy designs for the protective structures. Therefore, reliable calculations of the drag coefficients are required to reduce the design, manufacture, and installation costs of the protective structures. Here, we describe calculations of the drag coefficients of 2,000-kg stock and stockless anchors using numerical flow analyses. We show that the drag coefficients of the anchors converge to 1.0 and 0.8, respectively, regardless of the initial velocity and the Reynolds number.