Numerical Simulation of Ballast Water Exchange

In February,2004, at International Maritime Organization (IMO), LONDON, a new international convention 'International Convention fur the Control and Management of Ship's Ballast Water and Sediment 2004' was adopted. It is called 'Ballast Water Management Convention (BWM)'. Ballast water means charged seawater or fresh water in ship's special tanks (ballast tank) to keep safety navigation and ship's maneuverability. However, from 1980, it was point out the serious problem for marine ecosystem and human life that ballast water includes harmful marine species (and small organisms) and these species are also discharged along with ballast water. These species were released with discharged ballast water in water areas, where species are different from discharged ballast water. The problem is that released species increase when released species are more powerful than native species and consequently, marine ecological system is destroyed in released water area. Authors have inspected the validity of the ballast water exchange using pumping-through method that is one of the methods of ballast water management. In this paper, the numerical simulation of the motion and density of the fluid at the time of exchange of the fluid in a 2-dimensional tank using the pumping-through method was carried out by using two different type numerical methods. One method is MPS method that is one of the particle methods. Other one is Finite Different Method (FDM). Authors were compared with result of two numerical method calculations and experiment result and reported some knowledge from these results.