Five Years of Numerical Naval Ship Hydrodynamics at DTNSRDC

In 1974 the Numerical Naval Ship Hydrodynamics Program was established at the David W. Taylor Naval Ship Research and Development Center. The objective of the program is to develop new numerical methods which can be used to evaluate those hydrodynamic performance characteristics which cannot be satisfactorily predicted by traditional methods. In this paper, the accomplishments during the first five-year period (1974–1979) are discussed. During this initial period, the effort was devoted entirely to naval ship free-surface problems. Several successful methods have been developed for solving fully three-dimensional ship-motions, ship-wave-resistance and local-flow problems using linearized free-surface boundary conditions. Numerical methods have also been developed for unsteady and steady two-dimensional problems where the exact free-surface conditions are satisfied. These new numerical methods are more accurate than the conventional computational methods and they can be used to analyze several naval free-surface problems which previously could only be investigated experimentally. It is concluded that the Numerical Naval Ship Hydrodynamics Program should include consideration of all areas in naval ship hydrodynamics where it is believed that the application of advanced numerical techniques and computers can result in better solution techniques.