Using CFD to evaluate ship hull performance in realistic sea conditions

Guest Presenter: David Frisk, FS Dynamics

Growing competition and increasing environmental awareness within the marine industry drives a continuous need for more efficient methods for the design of new vessels. Today, CFD is widely used to perform analyses of ship hulls in calm water, yielding results which can be used to quantify important parameters such as calm water resistance or propeller-hull interaction. However, calm water is usually far from the true operating conditions, meaning that understanding the performance in real sea states is of great importance. In many cases, the optimum design for rough seas differs significantly from that for calm water.

CFD simulations of ships in waves place a higher demand on numerical methods and computational resources, as well as the postprocessing and interpretation of the data. On the other hand, the output can provide valuable information that can be used to optimize the hull geometry beyond what is possible using calm water analyses.

In the first part of this webinar, FS Dynamics will present recent work involving simulations of ship hulls in irregular, JONSWAP-based waves. A typical project involving analysis of different bow geometries of a fishing vessel is used to demonstrate how CFD can be used to quantify vessel performance in realistic operating conditions.

In the second part, a brief demonstration will be given showing how Simcenter STAR-CCM+ allows easy and fast setup of such simulations combined with efficient postprocessing of large amounts of simulation data.

Watch the webinar to learn how digital tools, including process automation, simulation, and design space exploration, can change your approach on how to design a ship.