Bilge keel loads and hull pressures created by bilge keels fitted to a rotating cylinder

This paper presents bilge keel loads and hull pressure measurements carried out on a rotating cylinder in a free surface water basin. A flat plate bilge keel and one more complex shaped bilge keel were studied to investigate the geometry effect. The draft of the cylinder was varied to study the effect of the vicinity of the free surface on the bilge keel loads and hull pressures. The rotation axis of the cylinder was fixed to define a pure roll experiment (one degree of freedom).The cylinder was subject to forced oscillations of varying amplitude leading to a KC range of 0.3–16. Using Fourier analysis the first three harmonic coefficients representing the normal bilge keel load were derived. The first harmonic drag and inertia coefficients are in good agreement to existing experimental data obtained for wall bounded flat plates fitted in a U-shaped water tunnel as reported by Sarpkaya and O’Keefe (1996). New insight is gained by the fact that the addition of higher harmonic contributions is essential to capture the time varying bilge keel normal force.The pressure measurements next to the bilge keel are compared to measurements reported by Ikeda et al. (1979). Similar findings are obtained, showing that the pressure on the hull in front of the moving bilge keel is KC independent while the vortex system in the wake of the bilge keel leads to KC dependent hull pressure distributions. The hull pressure jump over the bilge keel correlates well to the force coefficient on the bilge keel. The complex nature of the vortex induced hull pressures is manifested. The empirically derived hull pressure distribution by Ikeda et al. (1979) for the time instant of maximum velocity is shown to correlate reasonably well to the measured data with some conservatism in the absolute value.Although a cylinder is very different from a ship-shaped section, the experiments provide essential insight into the physics associated with roll damping and into the factors that should be included in a roll damping prediction method.