Comparative Study on Different CFD Solvers for Analysis of Ship Added Resistance

Abstract

This study deals with motion responses and the added resistance of the ship in waves using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In this study, motion response and the added resistance of the modified blunt Wigley are investigated using two types of CFD program: SNU-MHL-CFD (Seoul National University Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory CFD) and OpenFOAM. SNU-MHL-CFD is Euler equation solver which is an in-house code based on a Cartesian-grid and immersed boundary method. OpenFOAM is Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equation solvers which is an open source library. Before solving the ship motion in waves, hydrodynamic coefficients are calculated by forced heave and pitch motions and wave excitation forces/moments are computed from wave diffraction problem without any hull motion. Three types of solvers are used: two previously mentioned solvers and additionally commercial software, Star-CCM+. These results are validated with the experimental data. Finally, ship motion responses and added resistance in waves are compared with available experimental data and their computational costs are compared.