Numerical and Experimental Study of SPM Fish Cage: Comparison and Validation

Deformations and drag forces of fish cages are two main problems in engineering design and optimization. To precisely predict these parameters, a combined numerical method, which combined the beam and truss elements, was used to study the deformation and drag forces of SPM (the single point mooring) fish cage in this paper. Flume model experiments were carried out to validate the accuracy of the numerical model. It is found that the numerical results agreed well with the experimental data, with the maximum and averaged errors of 13% and 5.9%, respectively. It can be conducted that this combined numerical model was useful in the designing and development of fish cages.