Analysis on Rolling Damping of a Conventional Boat fitted with T-shaped Bilge Keels

Abstract

This work presents a numerical study on the effect of T-shaped bilge keels on the roll damping of a conventional boat. A scaled boat model with the same dimensions as that of Irkal et al. [2] was fitted with two T-shaped bilge keels at the edges of the model. Computational Fluid Dynamics method was employed to simulate the roll decay motion of the boat. The motion of the boat is captured using a 6DOF model and the Overset grid approach. Comparison was performed on the damping characteristics of the conventional I-shaped and the T-shaped bilge keels. In addition, the impact of the aspect ratio of the keel bilges on the roll damping of the boat was evaluated. It was found that the bilge keel aspect ratio influences the damping coefficient non-linearly. Sufficiently large aspect ratio, i.e. an aspect ratio greater than 2, is necessary in order to obtain an effective damping on the peak angle.