Dynamic analysis of hydrodynamic behavior of a flatfish cage system under wave conditions

This paper presents a simulation model based on the finite element method. The method is used to analyze the motion response and mooring line tension of the flatfish cage system in waves. The cage system consists of top frames, netting, mooring lines, bottom frames, and floats. A series of scaled physical model tests in regular waves are conducted to verify the numerical model. The comparison results show that the simulated and the experimental results agree well under the wave conditions, and the maximum pitch of the bottom frame with two orientations is about 12°. The motion process of the whole cage system in the wave can be described with the computer visualized technology. Then, the mooring line tensions and the motion of the bottom frame with three kinds of weight are calculated under different wave conditions. According to the numerical results, the differences in mooring line tensions of flatfish cages with three weight modes are indistinct. The maximum pitch of the bottom frame decreases with the increase of the bottom weight.