This paper presents the results in modelling of ship-generated waves around a modem tanker using the FINFLO-SHIP RANS solver developed at Helsinki University of Technology. Simulation for three-dimensional turbulent free-surface flows is performed in a numerical water tank. A cell-centred finite-volume (FV) scheme is implemented for the solution of the RANS equations with the artificial compressibility and the nonlinear free-surface boundary conditions. Three turbulence models, Baldwin- Lomax's model, Chien's low Reynolds number 5 -E model and Menter's k - w - SST model, are implemented. The calculated results are validated and they compare well with the experimental data in terms of the free-surface waves and wake. Furthermore, the convergence performance and the effects of the grid refinement on the waves are studied, including the effects of the turbulence models on the wave systems.
A study on turbulent free-surface flows in numerical ship hydrodynamics is one of the challenging topics. This involves a moving boundary problem like ship wavemaking. One key part is to deal with a free surface that is referred as an air-water interface. The free surface forms the upper boundary of the computational domain and it must be determined as part of the solution. Only its initial location and geometry are known in advance. In general, a moving mesh, one of two major approaches to cope with the free surface, is widely applied to viscous ship free-surface computations (Alessandrini et al., 1999, Li et al., 2001, Mascio et al., 2000, Miyata et al., 1992, Willson et al., 1998). In this way, the non-linear free-surface boundary conditions can be prescribed on the actual location of the free surface, while the dynamic free-surface boundary conditions on this location transmit information of this surface into the grid. As a result, a high order of accuracy may be preserved.
