Numerical Simulation Of Viscous Flow Around SWATH

Small Waterplane Area Twin Hulls (SWATH) is a kind of high performance ship with special shape which has been developed during last decades. Compared with conventional ships SWATH has more advantages. Especially because of its excellent seakeeping performance, SWATH has been accepted by some countries accomplished in shipbuilding and ocean exploration. China is one of the greatest ocean countries in the world, meanwhile it faces many difficulties such as population expanding, soil decreasing and energy sources reducing. It is very important for our country to exploit and use ocean resource in the 21 century. SWATH also has enormous advantages in aspect of military application. Therefore it is much necessary for us to possess our own SWATH and we must carry out a series of research into SWATH.Nowadays, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has developed quite mature. Many CFD commercial softwares appear and the scope related to becomes wider and wider. CFD commercial softwares receive extensive attention for their strong function to simulate complicated flow phenomena, man-machine conversation interfacial operation, intuitionistic and clear flow field visualization. The development of the softwares gains powerful sustainment from industry and government in West countries. In virtue of CFD commercial software workbench, researchers can avoid repeating work of programme, lighten heavy programme workload, accelerate work speed and enhance work quality. So we can completely make use of commercial softwares to help studying and developing SWATH.In this paper the viscous flows around SWATH are simulated based on the commercial software FLUENT. Firstly a mathematical SWATH in full scale is studied. The numerical results of total pressure, wall shear stress, corresponding viscous resistance coefficient at different velocity and so on are obtained. The computational viscous resistance coefficients are compared with the estimated ones using empirical formula and the results are found to be in good agreement.Then the numerical simulation of the flow around a real full-scale SWATH ship is conducted. The full-scale SWATH model is established through every offsets. In addition to resistance results the wake distribution at propeller plan is also obtained. In conclusion, the validity and practicability of the software FLUENT to predict the three-dimensional viscous flow field of SWATH are proved by these examples.This paper is an attempt to use commercial software in simulating viscous flow field of SWATH. More satisfying results would be achieved along with further study. As we put emphasis on shipbuilding and invest more in CFD research, it is believed that the research of our country on high performance ship like SWATH would rise to a new stage in future.