Sloshing Response of an Aquaculture Vessel: An Experimental Study

The sloshing response is crucial to the design and operation of aquaculture vessels and affects the safety of the culture equipment and the efficiency of the culture operation. A 1/50 scaled model was utilized to investigate the coupled sloshing response characteristics of a novel aquaculture vessel in a wave basin. Two wave directions (beam and head wave) and two filling levels (81.5% and 47.4%) are taken into account. The time-domain and frequency-domain characteristics of the sloshing response under the linear regular wave and extreme operational sea state were investigated using regular wave tests and irregular wave tests, respectively. The sloshing mechanism in the aquaculture tanks is complicated, due to the coupling effect between external waves, ship motion, and internal sloshing. In linear regular waves, the wave frequency mode dominates the sloshing response, which is larger under beam wave conditions than under head wave conditions and larger under half load conditions than full load conditions. The irregular wave test results confirmed the regular wave test conclusions, but the sloshing response has stronger nonlinearity, higher natural modes appeared, and the amplitude of the higher natural modes is also relatively larger.