Prediction of heave, pitch and roll ship motions in waves using RANSE method

The work aims to validate the usage of a general Computational Fluid Dynamics code to compute flow induced ship motions in waves. The motions of the ship and the wave dynamics have been implemented in the RANSE solver through user codes. Rigid body Motion equations are solved every iteration and the mesh is updated subsequently. The model chosen is a Wigley hull, for which experimental data are available in published literature. The 3D viscous free surface flow has been solved using finite-volume method, on a structured grid composed of hexahedral cells. The waves, which are produced in the numerical tank, are compared with experiments. The motion results, obtained in the current work, have also been compared with the results obtained using potential flow solver, SWAN. The ship motions predicted by the numerical simulation agree well with the experiments and promises to be a robust method for solving more practical and complex problems like prediction of slamming loads and ship behavior in an irregular seaway. Copyright © 2008 by ASME.