The VENTuRE team members from the University of Malta, Prof. Claire De Marco, Prof Tonio Sant, and Dr Mitchell Borg, and Dr Guiliano Vernengo from the University of Genoa attended OMAE2022 – 41st International Conference on Ocean, Offshore, and Arctic Engineering – held in Hamburg, Germany from 6th to 9th June 2022. The conference covered various engineering topics related to ship and maritime research, including:
- Hydrodynamics
- CFD Modeling Practice & Verification
- Wave Loading and Motions in Extreme Seas
- Digitalization, AI/ML, Digital Twins
- Adapting/Mitigating Climate Change
- Earthquake Design
- Internal Waves
- Computational Mechanics and Design Applications
- Coastal Engineering
- Fluid-Structure, Multi-body and Wave-body Interaction
- Marine Engineering and Technology
- Marine Hydrodynamics
- Marine Environment and Very Large Structures
- Ocean Engineering Technology
- Ship Hydromechanics
- Towed and Undersea Cables and Pipes, Mooring, and Buoy Technology
- Underwater Vehicles and Design Technology
- Unsteady Hydrodynamics, Vibrations, Acoustics and Propulsion
- Wave Mechanics, Modeling and Wave Effects
The OMAE conference is the ideal forum for persons from the scientific and industrial communities from around the world to:
- meet and present advances in technology and its scientific support;
- exchange ideas and experiences while promoting technological progress and its application in industry; and
- promote international cooperation in ocean, offshore and artic engineering.
Dr Mitchell Borg presented their paper entitled “An Experimentation and Numerical Analysis of Liquid-Cargo Tank Sloshing Diminishment due to Perforated Partitions” . The publication was funded by Malta Marittima and Transport Malta through the ‘DeSloSH’ (Decreasing the sloshing effect on ships) project supported through the Maritime Seed Award 2020 and in joint collaboration with the VENTuRE (Project no. 856887) EU funded H2020 project.
Abstract: This study puts forward an analysis of the influence of liquid sloshing upon oscillating vessels by means of numerical modeling. Rectangular cross-sectional tanks incorporating an open-bore and partitioned setups at 20%, 40%, and 60% fill-volume levels were implemented to establish the torque and static pressure exerted solely by the fluid dynamics upon oscillation within the tanks. Through verification of dam-break dynamics, the sloshing models coupled the explicit volume-of-fluid and non-iterative time-advancement schemes within a computational fluid dynamic solver. Utilising an oscillatory frequency of 1 Hz, the resultant liquid impact reduced within the partitioned setup due to the suppression of wave dynamics.
Dr Giuliano Vernengo presented his paper “Hydrodynamic interactions of multiple surface-piercing struts by smoothed particles hydrodynamics”. Dr Vernengo is a research fellow (Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering) at the University of Genoa.
Abstract: The hydrodynamics of surface piercing struts and pile-like structures in general presents some very complex fluid dynamics phenomena that are worth to be investigated. Among them there are the forward wave pile-up at stagnation, the wave breaking with flow reversal like that observed in Bidone-type hydraulic jumps, flow separation caused by interactions of steep free-surface waves and the turbulent wall boundary layer. Such a type of flow structures plays a key role in several engineering applications, ranging from naval architecture to civil and ocean engineering. The hydrodynamic analysis of different surface-piercing struts in tandem configuration has been done in the framework of a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic approach available through the open-source software DualSPHysics, developed to exploit the GP-GPU architecture to speed up the computation. A numerical wave tank has been set-up to carry out calm water tests. Beyond the influence of the forward speed, the analysis has focused on the effect of three main geometric parameters establishing the configuration: the longitudinal and the lateral distance among the vertical, surface-piercing, struts and the relative size among them. The mean and the rms values of the unsteady near-field free surface elevation have been analyzed and compared among the selected cases and interaction effect are studied in comparison to the free surface obtained for the equivalent single strut configuration.
The presented work was supported through the collaborative programme of the VENTuRE (project no. 856887) EU funded H2020 project. During the main conference sessions, the VENTuRE project team members carried out networking endeavours with university representatives to discuss possible future collaborations.
Prof. Tonio Sant and Ms. Charise Cutajar, affiliated to the University of Malta also presented their research work on the SEA2F project. The project deals with offshore energy storage using hydro-pneumatic accumulators and is being funded by the FUSION R&I Research Excellence Programme funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (Project Reference: REP-2021-008). The research is being undertaken in collaboration with the University spin-off FLASC B.V. The paper was presented by Ms Charise Cutajar and was entitled “Investigating the increase in energy storage density of subsea hydro-pneumatic accumulators using a compressible fluid undergoing phase change” .