Best practice guidlines for the application of computational fluid dynamics in marine hydrodynamics

The availability of robust commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software and the rapid growth in processing power have lead to an increasing use of CFD for the solutions of fluid engineering problems across all industrial sectors. The marine industry is no exception: computational methods are now routinely used, for example, to examine vessel boundary layer and wake, to predict propeller performance and to evaluate structural loads.
There has been a growing awareness that computational methods can prove difficult to apply reliably i.e. with a known level of accuracy. This is in part due to CFD being a knowledge- based activity and, despite the availability of the computational software; the knowledge base embodied in the expert user is not available. This has lead to a number of initiatives that have sought to structure existing knowledge in the form of best practice advice. Few notable examples are the best practice guidelines developed by ERCOFTAC, the European Thematic network QNET-CFD and of course the best practice guideline applied to the marine applications, MARNET-CFD.
The guidelines presented here build on the work of these initiatives and particularly updatethe MARNET-CFD Best Practise Guidelines with recent results and conclusions obtained during the VIRTUE project – The Virtual Tank Utility in Europe.
The guidelines provide simple practical advice on the application of computational methods in hydrodynamics within the marine industry. It covers both potential and viscous flow calculations.