PIV velocity field measurements of flow around a KRISO 3600TEU container ship model

The main purpose of this investigation was to demonstrate a useful application of the particle image velocimetry (PIV) method to analyze the complex flow characteristics around a ship. For a sample illustration, the KRISO 3600TEU container ship model was chosen. The flow structure in the stern and near-wake region of the model has been investigated experimentally in a circulating water channel. Instantaneous velocity fields measured by the PIV velocity field measurement technique have been ensemble-averaged to give details of flow structures such as the spatial distributions of the local mean velocity, vorticity, and turbulent kinetic energy. The free-stream velocity was fixed at U _o = 0.6m/s, and the corresponding Reynolds number based on the length between perpendiculars was about 9.0 × 10⁵. The container ship model shows a complicated three-dimensional flow structure in the stern and near-wake regions. The PIV results clearly revealed the formation of large-scale bilge vortices in the stern region and their effect on the flow in the near-wake. The results shown here provide valuable information for hull form design and the validation of viscous ship flow codes and of turbulence models.