Hull resistance & wake for a displacement vessel
Free-surface VOF simulation across a Froude number sweep, dynamic trim and sinkage solved via 6-DOF coupling, validated against towing-tank resistance curves.
Problem
A displacement-hull design needed a resistance curve across its operating speed range before the client committed to a towing-tank test campaign, plus early insight into wake quality feeding the propeller plane.
Approach
We used OpenFOAM's interFoam for free-surface capture via the Volume-of-Fluid method, with 6-DOF rigid-body coupling so the hull was free to trim and sink under its own generated wave system. The Froude number was swept across the full speed range on an 8M-cell mesh refined at the free surface and in the propeller-plane wake.
Outcome
Predicted resistance tracked standard towing-tank benchmark practice within the tolerance the client's naval architects required to shortlist hull variants before physical testing, cutting the number of tank-tested configurations.
// CANONICAL REFERENCES
The literature behind this run
- Hirt, C. W. & Nichols, B. D. (1981). Volume of Fluid (VOF) Method for the Dynamics of Free Boundaries. Journal of Computational Physics, 39(1)
- Larsson, L., Stern, F. & Visonneau, M. (2014). Numerical Ship Hydrodynamics: An Assessment of the Gothenburg 2010 Workshop. Springer, Series: Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics
- Deshpande, S. S., Anumolu, L. & Trujillo, M. F. (2012). Evaluating the Performance of the Two-Phase Flow Solver interFoam. Computational Science & Discovery, 5(1)
These are the foundational papers the underlying method or validation approach is built on — not client deliverables. Full citation details are provided so the physics can be checked independently.
Have a similar geometry or flow regime? We'll scope the mesh and turnaround.
Start a project