Experimental study of the drag on fine-mesh netting

The hydrodynamic forces on netting have been investigated by many researchers. They proposed equations to estimate the drag and lift coefficients of the netting, taking the effects of the Reynolds number and solidity ratio into account. However, there are few studies on the hydrodynamic forces on netting with a fine mesh, which is sometimes used in Japan for farming small fish, such as young sardines. The size of the fine mesh is a few millimeters, whereas the solidity ratio of the netting is similar to that of standard netting. The drag on fine-mesh netting may increase because of the effects of blocking. In the present study, the drag on fine-mesh netting was examined by means of a towing experiment in a water tank. The experiment included an investigation of the drag on a planar net, a half-circular net, a circular net, and a circular net with a bottom, to understand the effect of the attack angle of the water current and wake. As a result, the drag coefficient of the plane net was in the range of those proposed in the previous studies. The effect of the attack angle of the water current was approximately reproduced by the cosine function. The reduction factors for the water current velocity through the circular net also agreed with those proposed in the previous studies, whereas it was approximately at the maximum among the previous estimations. Consequently, the drag on fine-mesh netting could be well explained by the estimates from the previous studies. However, the drag at the bottom of the net, parallel to the water current, was overestimated if hydrodynamic forces act on each transverse twine normal to the flow direction. The effects of the interactions among the twines, which are aligned parallel to the flow direction, should be specifically examined as a future study.