[ssaeher]

Hi, im somewhat new to CFD so bare with me.
For my thesis, im currently looking at moonpools for longlining vessel, which is a type of fishing vessel. The intention is to investigate different shapes like round, square and elliptical to find a shape which allows for more circulation of the water at low speed and calm water(approx. 3 knots). This is to avoid the accumulation of dirty water inside the moonpool.

My intention is to do the following steps:
1. Look at the whole ship with and without moonpool to see how big of a difference the moonpool makes to the flow pattern underneath the ship.
2. Scale down the domain to only look at the area around the moonpool if the flow pattern looks sufficient "steady".
3. Play around with the small domain with different moonpool shapes to find one that suits the purpose.

Attached is a picture of the hull with the round moonpool, and the dimensions of the vessel as 60 meters long and 15 meters wide. The dimensions of the moonpool is a diameter of 1.5 meters, which ends up in a larger basin of 3x4 meters.
URL to picture:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ys...Vj-y-IfLbBOcTt

My questions are:
1. Do you think my methodology could work?
2. How big do you think my "small scale" domain has to be?
3. What boundary conditions should I have to be able to capture the free surface?

Additional info is that im using Star CCM+.

On beforehand thanks!
-Sivert Sæther