Comparison of Free Surface Capturing Approaches in OpenFOAM for Ship Resistance Prediction

Paper in proceedings, 2017

The prediction of calm water ship resistance by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has matured considerably in recent years. For displacement ships, accurate prediction of the free-surface is normallyreasonably robust, provided the mesh resolution is sufficient. For more complex situations, such as for high speed vessels where spray becomes important or when in situations where the transom is only partially dry on medium speed ships, the numerical schemes to be used are still in development; even more so perhaps if ship motions and ocean waves are considered. Thus, in the open source package OpenFOAM, there are a wide range of options to choose from when setting up the free-surface simulation, all with different impact on performance. Thus, in the present study, free-surface prediction by different interface capturing are presented for the KCS (KRISO Container Ship) hull resistance simulation. Focus is on some of the options available in OpenFOAM, but also the commercial package Star-CCM+ has been investigated. All simulations have been performed by considering incompressible RANS and the k − ωS S T turbulence model.