The turbulent free surface flow around a self-propelled KRISO 138K LNG Carrier is numerically simulated using the finite volume based multi-block RANS code, WAVIS developed at KRISO. The realizable k-ε turbulence model with a wall function is employed for the turbulence closure. The free surface is captured with the Level-Set method and body forces are used to model the effects of a propeller without resolving the detail blade flow. In order to obtain an accurate free surface solution and stable convergence, the computations are executed with a proper fine grid refinement around the free surface and with an adoption of implicit discretization scheme for the Level-Set formulation. The computed velocity vectors at the several stations and wave patterns show a good agreement with the experimental results measured at the KRISO towing tank.
The efforts to predict the hydrodynamic performances around a ship have been made for a long time. It has been usually carried out by an experiment in the towing tank. The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) for ship hydrodynamics is matured over the last decade. CFD technique is now adopted as the routine design process of a ship by supporting the designers to develop and evaluate the ship hull forms.
Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO) of Korea have been making an endeavor to develop the reliable CFD tool for the prediction of ship hydrodynamic performance. The developed code named as WAVIS is now spread out to many Korean shipyards and widely used for the evaluation of a practical ship hull forms. As a link to this effort, the experimental data for the flow around practical hull forms are obtained to validate the CFD code (Van et al., 1997, 1998a, and 1998b).
