Experimental and numerical studies of sediment removal in double bottom ballast tanks

The sediments inside the ballast tanks might compromise the effectiveness of the ballast water exchange procedure. In the present study, the sediment removal from double bottom ballast tanks due to flow-through ballast water exchange is investigated by simplified experimental and numerical models. Two flow rates and two sediment densities were considered to verify their influence on the process. Besides, the effectiveness of two tank configuration modifications to improve the sediments removal was investigated. The first is the introduction of a flow deflector inside the tank and the second is the water inflow from the bottom. A fully Lagrangian particle-based method is adopted to simulate the sediment removal process with complex tank geometry. A new boundary condition is proposed to model the mesh of the bottom inlet in the bottom inflow configuration. Despite the simplifications of the numerical model, the computational results are in good agreement with the experimental ones. The results show that the flow-through ballast water exchange method might not be effective to remove the sediments entrapped between the bottom stiffeners, and the proposed modifications, despite challenging implementation, improve the sediment removal.