Experimental Data on the Systematic Variation of the Internal Damping Inside a U-Shaped Anti-Roll Tank

Anti-Roll Tanks (ARTs) can be a successful device to reduce ship roll motion (Figure 1), but the tank has to be properly designed. A good design includes an appropriate number of damping devices in the tank to reduce the water motions at resonance and to increase the frequency range over which the tank works efficiently. It is difficult to accurately predict the effect of different damping devices on the roll damping moment of the tank; usually tests on a rotating table, so called bench tests, are performed for each individual design. Nowadays, CFD (see e.g. [1]) calculations solving the URANS equations can predict the effect of damping devices on the roll motion of the tank. In order to validate such codes a series of experiments with a U-type ART on a rotating table have been carried out where the interior arrangement in the duct of the tank has been varied. The set-up of the experiment, the measurement system and the results of the experiments are presented and discussed in this publication; the raw data of the experiments are also made available.