An Adjoint Numerical / Empirical Approach to Predict the Total Resistance of Ships

This study aims to propose a fast calculation method to evaluate the total resistance of a traditional ship hull form. It became a common knowledge nowadays that the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach is robust in calculating the frictional resistance component of a ship with double body flow solutions. Modeling of the free surface is still a problematic issue due to the mathematical background of the Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach and even if a good match is obtained with experiments, these multiphase computations consume a lot of time and need higher computational power. To circumvent this problem, this study proposes a hybrid CFD-empirical approach. The results of the single phase computations obtained by CFD is coupled with the empirical approach of Holtrop-Mennen. The frictional and viscous pressure resistances of a benchmark ship (Duisburg Test Case – DTC) were calculated by CFD and using the wave resistance values of the Holtrop-Mennen resistance calculation method, the total resistance was obtained. To assess double body solutions dominated by viscosity, two different turbulence models were evaluated in the process. It was found out that k-omega turbulence model generated slightly better results compared to the k-epsilon according to the reference experiments.

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