Numerical study of closed rigid fish cages in waves and comparison with experimental data

Closed fish cages have gained increased interest in marine aquaculture. However, knowledge on the seakeeping behaviour of a floating closed cage and the influence of the contained water inside the cage are still limited. In this paper, a coupled numerical model is developed for the simulation of closed rigid cages in waves. Numerical studies are conducted both in the frequency domain and in the time domain, and compared with scaled physical experiments. Special attention has been drawn to the coupling effects of sloshing on cage response and the resulting mooring line forces. The comparative analyses show that sloshing of the contained water has large influence on the coupled surge and pitch motions of the cage. Sloshing is also found to have significant effect on the mean-drift forces in regular waves. In the tested/simulated irregular waves, the mooring forces are found to be dominated by the slow-drift motions, which indicates that the slowly-varying wave drift forces need to be considered in the design of the mooring system for a floating closed cage.