Moving propeller systems can introduce significant disturbances in stratified environments by mixing the surrounding fluid.Restorative buoyancy forces subsequently act on this region/patch of mixed fluid, causing it to eventually collapse vertically and spread laterally in order to recover the original stratification.This work describes the use of an Tanks/Jerseys OpenFOAM solver, modified using existing functionality, to simulate a moving propeller system in a stratified environment.
Its application considers a rotating KCD-32 propeller in a laboratory-scale wave tank which mimics published experiments on mixed patch collapse.The numerically-predicted collapse behaviour is compared with empirical data and scaling laws.The results agree closely, both qualitatively and quantitatively, thereby representing a successful step towards Product Care the validation of the numerical model.