Turbulence modeling of transverse flow on ship hulls in shallow water

Abstract

The hydrodynamic forces acting on a ship that travels in restricted water vary greatly with water depth and the geometry of the ship hull. This will affect the ship maneuverability in terms of various flow effects like for instance squat, when the ship is sucked down towards the seabed due to a pressure drop on the hull at forward speed. It is, thus, important to gain detailed knowledge on these aspects of marine engineering. The problem is in the present work addressed through a numerical investigation of turbulent transverse flow on two-dimensional ship sections in shallow water.

The numerical code is validated against traditional flow problems in the literature. Namely, the Backward-facing step (BFS) and the Smoothly-contoured ramp (SCR). 2D and 3D laminar flows and 2D low Reynolds number turbulent flows are calculated, and the results are found to be in good agreement with the previous numerical and experimental comparison data. The turbulence model used in the calculations is the one-equation Spalart-Allmaras model.

The overall goal of achieving more efficient and accurate numerical schemes will always be in focus of code development. Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is then a very helpful tool to save both time for grid generation prior to the calculations in question and the CPU hours needed to solve the governing equations. The latter is even more evident in a parallel environment. These aspects are included in the present investigation as part of the process to adapt and investigate a CFD tool suitable to handle turbulent flows on a ship hull in shallow water. Several physical and numerical parameters are included in the present study and the Plackett-Burman screening design is utilized to efficiently analyze the results. With the latter method, a simple function for calculating the drag force on a two-dimensional ship section as function of the given parameters has been obtained.