Hull Design and Vessel Dynamics

Wave-piercing CFD simulation of Earthrace

The Earthrace boat pierces through 12m waves.
Simulation courtesy of XC Engineering.

Flow around the hulls of ships is an important focus for designers. Many aspects of the flow past the hull need to be examined, including the resistance (drag), stern boundary layer, streamwise vortices, and velocity field at the propeller plane. Also of vital interest to ship designers is the total resistance or drag acting on the ship hull. FLOW-3D can be used as a valuable tool for predicting all these values.

FLOW-3D simulation of the alt="The Ulstein Group's X-bow®, with an inverted bow

The Ulstein Group's X-bow®, with an inverted bow, is designed to improve handling in rough sea and lower fuel consumption. FLOW-3D was used to simulate the action of this ship at sea.
Courtesy of Narvik Institute of Technology. Watch a hull-wave interaction animation.

Helping Earthrace Circumnavigate Around the World

FLOW-3D was chosen by the Earthrace team because of its ability to simulate general 6-DOF motion of the ship's hull fully coupled with waves on the surface of the water. The hull's motion is treated as a rigid body subject to surge, heave, sway, pitch, roll and yaw.

Wave-piercing hull design CFD simulation, colored by pressure.

Wave piercing hull design of the Earthrace boat, colored
by pressure. Image courtesy of XC Engineering;
post-processing done using Tecplot 360.

Earthrace's unique hull design allows it to pierce through waves rather than go over them. This design allows the boat to maintain a nearly constant speed regardless of how rough the sea conditions are.

The simulation on the left shows a numeric modeling of wave-piercing design. Learn more about Earthrace's second attempt to break the world record for circumnavigation, fueled only by biofuel.