Maritime CFD Applications

Optimizing hull design, onboard fuel tanks and cargo holds, assessing wave generation and wave impact on marine structures, investigating ventilation dynamics—all of these are important to the marine engineer and naval architect. Computer simulation provides a convenient way to analyze these processes without having to resort to costly experiments.

This FLOW-3D simulation describes the dynamic behaviour of a ship in presence of Stokes waves. The ship is modeled in FLOW-3D as a moving object, moving with a forward speed of 20kn. FLOW-3D results processed with EnSight. Courtesy of XC Engineering.

CFD-101 – Turbulence Modeling

The majority of flows in nature are turbulent. Because of this fact the question is often raised whether it is necessary to include some representation of turbulence in computational models of flow processes. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question and the modeler must exercise some engineering judgment.

The most successful computational models for practical engineering purposes are those involving two or more transport equations. A minimum of two equations is desirable because it takes two quantities to characterize the length and time scales of turbulent processes. The use of transport equations to describe these variables allows turbulence creation and destruction processes to have localized rates. Read more in CFD-101 >