Free-surface flow around an appended hull

The prediction of the total drag experienced by an advancing ship is a complicated problem which requires a thorough understanding of the hydrodynamic forces acting on the hull, the physical processes from which these forces arise as well as their mutual interaction. A general numerical method to predict the hydrodynamic performance of a twin-propeller combatant ship is presented in the paper, which describes the solution of a RANS solver coupled with a body force method as an attempt in investigating the flow features around the ship hull equipped with rotating propellers and rudders. A special focus is made on the propeller non-symmetrical inflow field, aimed at obtaining the necessary data for the propulsive performances evaluation as well as for the propeller final design. The reported work allows not only the performance evaluation for the overall performances of a hull, but also leads to the development, implementation and validation of new concepts in modeling the turbulent vortical flows, with direct connection to the ship propulsion problem.