Computational Investigation into Resistance Characteristics of a Full-Scale Pusher-Barge System

In the presence of hydrodynamic motion interference between pusher and multiple barge configurations, a reliable investigation allowing an accurate prediction of her total resistance is obviously required. To achieve such objective, the Computational fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach is then proposed to predict the total ship's resistance of a pusher-barge system in the calm water condition. The various barge's configurations incorporated with various Froude numbers (Fr) have been considered in the computational simulation incorporated with the full-scale dimension of the pusher-barge. In general, the CFD results revealed that the total resistances of the various configurations of the pusher-barge system had a qualitatively good agreement with the experimental model test results. Merely, the mcrease of Froude number (Fr = 0.128 to 0.308) was proportional to the magnitude of total resistance. In addition, the pusher-barge system of the 33BP configuration provides the highest resistance as.compared to others. It should be noted here that the pusher-barges configurations led to the susceptible effect to the total ship's resistance which resulted in remarkable mcrease of the effective power values as the substituting their arrangements from the longitudinal configurations and to the lateral ones. This finding provides a very valuable insight aimed at selecting the proper pusher-barge configurations towards reducing the total ship's resistance.