High resolution ship hydrodynamics simulations in open source environment

Abstract

The numerical simulation of wake and free-surface flow around ships is a complex topic that involves multiple tasks: the generation of an optimal computational grid and the development of numerical algorithms capable to predict the flow field around a hull. In this paper, a numerical framework is developed aimed at high-resolution CFD simulations of turbulent, free-surface flows around ship hulls. The framework consists in the concatenation of “tools”, partly available in the open-source finite volume library OpenFOAM®. A novel, flexible mesh-generation algorithm is presented, capable of producing high-quality computational grids for free-surface ship hydrodynamics. The numerical frame work is used to solve some benchmark problems, providing results that are in excellent agreement with the experimental measures.

Keywords

ship hydrodynamics / high-resolution simulation / grid generation / free-surface / turbulence, OpenFOAM®