Ship Hull Validation Studies

The ship manufacturing industry predominantly relies on tow-tank testing of wax models to asses the performance and sea keeping characteristics of new hull shapes. Despite its high costs, tow tank testing with small scale models is incapable of matching the full scale Reynolds' and Froude' rules of similarity simultaneously. As a result, the physics being evaluated are inconsistent with full scale conditions.

CFD can simulate the exact sea conditions at full scale, hence predict the ship hull performance characteristics accurately. With simulations, not only the basic data obtained from experiments can be collected at a fraction of the cost, but also additional insight can be gained through detailed data analysis and visualizations. Combined, these provide significant reduction in the cost and time invested on design iterations.

Several hull shapes with/without appendages are being simulated to validate the CFD models against experimental tow-tank data.  Among these,  Wigley, Series 60 and 5415 are well studied shapes.

In these studies we are in an effort to fine tune the turbulence models, solver schemes, hull motion models and volumetric grids to improve simulation costs and accuracy.