Numerical Study on the Improvement of the Motion Performance of a Light Buoy

A light buoy is equipped with lighting functions and navigation signs. Its shape and colors indicate the route to vessels sailing nearby in the daytime, with its lights providing this information at night. It also plays a role in notifying the presence of obstacles such as reefs and shallows. When a light buoy operates in the ocean, the visibility and angle of light from the lantern installed on the buoy changes, which may cause them to function improperly. Therefore, it is necessary for the buoy to have stable and minimal motions under given environmental conditions, mainly waves. In this study, motion analyses for a newly developed lightweight light-buoy in waves were performed to predict the motion performance and determine the effect of the developed appendages for improving the motion performance. First, free decay tests, including benchmark cases, were performed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to estimate the viscous damping coefficients, which could not be obtained using potential-based simulations. A comparison was made of the results from potential-based simulations with and without considering viscous damping coefficients, which were estimated using CFD. It was confirmed that the pitch and heave motions of the buoy became smaller when the developed appendages were adopted.