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The R/V Athena is a converted high speed U.S. Navy patrol gunboat capable of speeds of at least 35 knots with a length of L=154 feet. Simulations were performed at model scale and compared with measurements taken at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division using a 1/8.25 scale barehull model of the R/V Athena.
The meshing requirements of these mixed phase analyses are very demanding. Since the interface between the water and air is being captured, the grid must be highly resolved in the zone where the water-air surface is expected, especially in the direction normal to the free surface. The density ratio across the interface is on the order of 1000 to 1. This translates into a typical vertical spacing requirements are on the order of 1.0e-03. When the surface is highly irregular, such as an overturning wave, this mesh spacing is required in all three directions.
A fully unstructured mesh would require an exorbitant number of tetrahedral elements to fully resolve all regions of the domain where the high gradients are expected. Structured meshes can be used to efficiently resolve the air-water interface in calm regions of the domain, but would result in over-resolving far field regions due to propagation of the grid resolution near the air-water interface. Therefore, a hybrid mesh topology was chosen to model the complete domain consisting of the surface ship, the air-water interface and far field.
Gridgen was used as the primary tool to create the viscous meshes for these analyses. Structured blocks were created to resolve the air-water interface near the bow and transom stern regions of the ship where steep and overturning waves were anticipated. In the vertical direction, these blocks extend z/L=0.025 above and z/L=0.0125 below the calm water surface.
Hybrid mesh at the calm water line.
The figure above shows the mesh at the calm water line. The calmer regions of the air-water interface were modeled with prismatic elements. These elements were created by marching a triangulated mesh in the vertical direction. The vertical spacing matched the spacing defined in the fully structured blocks just mentioned. The remaining regions of the domain were modeled with fully unstructured tetrahedral elements. In addition, viscous elements were inserted normal to the ship surface using an in-house developed viscous mesh generation program.
The predicted free surface where overturning waves can be observed at the bow and transom.
Results were obtained for the R/V Athena research vessel in calm seas at Fr=0.43 and Re=19.8x10^6. The two images above show a perspective view of the predicted free surface where overturning waves can be observed at the bow and transom. The figure below shows a comparison of the predicted wave contours with measurements.
Comparison of the predicted wave contours with measurements.
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