Study of a Container Ship with Breaking Waves at High Froude Number Using URANS and DDES Methods

The KRISO container ship model is used for numerical simulations to investigate hydrodynamic performance under high speeds. Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) and delayed detached eddy simulation (DDES) approaches are used to resolve the flow field around the ship model. High-resolution Volume of Fluid (VOF) technique in OpenFOAM is used to capture the free surface. The present work focuses on the wave-breaking phenomena of high-speed ships. To study the speed effects on the phenomenon of ship bow wave breaking, three different speeds, i.e., Fn = .26, .35, and .40, are investigated for a fixed ship model in calm water. Predicted resistance and wave patterns under Fn = .26 are validated with available experimental data, and a good agreement is achieved. The breaking wave phenomena can be observed from both URANS and DDES results for Froude numbers greater than .35. And the Fn = .40 case shows more violent breaking bow waves. The process of overturning and breaking of bow wave is more complex in the DDES results, and some small-scale free surface features are also captured. The predicted bow wave is compared with the experiment conducted at the China Ship Scientific Research Center. It shows that the DDES results are more accurate. Wave profiles and vorticity field at several cross sections are presented to illustrate the relationship between bow waves and vortices. It is found that the free surface vorticity dissipates quickly in the URANS simulation, which leads to the difference compared with the DDES results.