Moonpool in Waves: CFD Verification and Validation of Wave Elevation Inside a Moonpool

Large water motion inside the moonpool of vessels operating in waves can be excited by pressure fluctuations produced by external waves and vessel motion. Extreme consequences of this effect may include injuries for crew members, and damages to deck equipment resulting in downtime for the vessel. The accepted method to predict this non-linear phenomenon is a combination of model tests and potential solver. Nevertheless, model tests are generally conducted at the end of the design phase leading to serious problems if the moonpool performance is not sufficient. CFD solvers proved their capability of modelling complex flow phenomena and their use as a design tool for the moonpool is growing. However, a complete verification & validation is still missing. In the present work the water motion inside a moonpool and the forces on the hull, for a vessel in head waves without forward speed, are estimated using the MARIN software ReFRESCO. In doing so, the goal is to define the accuracy of the code for a rectangular moonpool with sharp edges without additional damping devices. For a deeper comprehension of the physics involved, a stepwise approach was followed. The work starts with an empty domain in which only regular waves were generated to assess the propagation and absorption of waves in ReFRESCO. Secondly, fixed vessel simulations were performed to study the influence of grid dimension, mesh refinement and boundary conditions. Then forced heave oscillations were simulated to estimate the damping and added mass. Verification studies were carried out for all the presented to this point. Finally, results from free-floating simulations were validated against experimental results