Computational Predictions vs. Model Testing for a High Speed Vessel with Lifting Bodies

Current transformational naval philosophy of operations is demanding increased performance from naval vessels, requiring vessels to travel at higher speeds in a seaway. To meet these needs, naval architects have been pursuing non-traditional hull forms. This prompted the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to study patented lifting body technology (Loui et al. 2006) through the Composite High Speed Vessel (CHSV) program, which incorporated lifting body technology into a monohull design to achieve improvements in resistance and seakeeping. Lifting bodies are large underwater appendages with significant volume and foil-shaped, cambered cross sections designed to generate lift at speed, resulting in improved resistance and seakeeping.
Increased interest in non-traditional hull forms is posing challenges for many computational tools. Complex geometries require the naval engineering community to modify or write new software packages to accurately predict vessel performance. Due to the complexity of the geometry of lifting bodies, the CHSV program provided an opportunity to expand and extend some computational tools to handle this novel geometry and to further test tools that currently have this capability. An extensive hydrodynamic scale model testing program was performed for the project providing the opportunity for software validation. This paper concentrates on comparing the computational work performed with the model test results.