The tremendous growth o f the fishfarming industry in Norway over the past decades was supported by new designs and materials fo r fish farms, enabling bigger fish cages to be positioned in more exposed sea areas. Today, the nets o f most fish cages in Norway are made from nylon, but also new net materials are proposed to better prevent escapes, pro tect fish from predator attacks, improve the stability offish cages, and reduce biofouling. Some o f these materials are stiff in at least one direction, and there still is a lack o f knowledge about the behavior o f nets with bending stiffness in currents and waves. The aim o f this study was to determine how nets with bending stiffness deform in differen t cur rents and how the deformation influences the drag on the nets and to compare the results with predictions from a numerical model. Three types o f net (PET, copper, and steel) were clamped to a solid steel bar on the top side but were otherwise unrestricted. The nets were subjected to several flow speeds between 0.1 and 0.9 mis. The net deformation was determined with an optical tracking system, and the forces on the net panels were measured with a multi-axis force!
torque sensor system. It is shown that bending stiffness and density o f nets affect net deformation, as both parameters impact the balance between drag and gravitational forces on the nets. Net deformation leads to a decrease o f the projected net area. As the rate o f deformation with current speed varies greatly between different net types, the discrepancy between measured drag and drag values nor malized to the projected net area at different current speeds follows different relation ships fo r different nets. A numerical model, FhSim, was able to predict net deformation o f nets with bending stiffness well, and it is shown thatFhSim could not only account fo r the effect o f bending stiffness on net deformation, but also that the model captures the structural dynamics o f nets with bending stiffness in a current. J ou rn al of O ffs h o re M ech an ics and A rctic E n g in eering C o p y rig h t© T a b le 2 O v e r v ie w o v e r f lo w s p e e d s t h e n e t s a n d m o u n t s w e r e s u b je c t e d to