Evolving Computational Capability For Ship Hydrodynamics

Evolving Computational Capability for Ship Hydrodynamics

The ability to obtain flow field predictions of surface ships with Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) codes has improved tremendously in the last few years. This has been a result of improvements in experience, RANS codes in general, and computer capacity. In particular, the move to parallel processing has been a major catalyst for the recent improvements and a threshold of the usefulness of RANS may well have been crossed. This is particularly significant at a time the U.S. Navy is attempting to move to high-speed ships and more operations in the littorals, both of which are driving ship designs well outside of the traditional experience and experimental data bases. A discussion of where RANS computations may be able to significantly influence the current design and analysis process for surface ships is discussed. Specific areas include: hull flow field and resistance, propulsor inflow, waterjet inlets, bilge keel and appendage alignment, roll motions, maneuvering forces, and scale effects. A number of examples are given for various configurations including: Athena fitted with waterjets, AWJ-21, CG-47, DDG-51, an early DD(X) concept, an aircraft carrier, and Sea Shadow.

Proceedings of the 26th National Conference on Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Power

Evolving Computational Capability for Ship Hydrodynamics

The ability to obtain flow field predictions of surface ships with Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) codes has improved tremendously in the last few years. This has been a result of improvements in experience, RANS codes in general, and computer capacity. In particular, the move to parallel processing has been a major catalyst for the recent improvements and a threshold of the usefulness of RANS may well have been crossed. This is particularly significant at a time the U.S. Navy is attempting to move to high-speed ships and more operations in the littorals, both of which are driving ship designs well outside of the traditional experience and experimental data bases. A discussion of where RANS computations may be able to significantly influence the current design and analysis process for surface ships is discussed. Specific areas include: hull flow field and resistance, propulsor inflow, waterjet inlets, bilge keel and appendage alignment, roll motions, maneuvering forces, and scale effects. A number of examples are given for various configurations including: Athena fitted with waterjets, AWJ-21, CG-47, DDG-51, an early DD(X) concept, an aircraft carrier, and Sea Shadow.