Reduced-Order Time-Domain Simulation of Floating Bodies for Efficient Design Analysis

This paper describes the development and implementation of a reduced-order model to represent the hydrodynamic forces acting on a ship using Impulse-Response Functions (IRF). The approach will be conducted using Aegir, a timedomain seakeeping program that uses an advanced, Non-Rational Uniform B-Spline (NURBS) based, high-order boundary element method. The Cummins equation is slightly modified such that the memory function is decomposed into two terms: one for the impulsive velocity and the other term for the impulsive displacement. The present approach also further develops a method to simulate interactions between multiple floating bodies. The IRF convolutions for the free surface memory effect significantly reduce the computational effort compared to direct simulation. This will be demonstrated for both single and multi-body forward-speed, seakeeping simulations.