CFD in the marine industry: today and

tomorrow
by Inno Gatin | Sep 7, 2019 | Hydrodynamics and Resistance | 4 comments

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In the world of advancing digital technology, it important to identify all the best ways to apply it to the
extremely complex task of designing a ship. Riding the wave of the rapid progress of High Performance
Computing, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become an attractive tool for gaining valuable insight
into hydrodynamic characteristics of surface vessels. CFD, or more specifically RANS based CFD methods,
models the fluid flow with Navier-Stokes equations, accounting for their nonlinear nature, viscous and
turbulent effects. It is a complete method in terms of physical modelling, where very little is left to
assumptions. This allows it to be highly accurate and precise, but it also makes it very computationally
expensive comparing to most engineering tools in the field. It also requires a highly skilled CFD specialist,
preferably with a background in naval architecture. Needless to say, such individuals are expensive, hard to
find, and can only do one thing – CFD for naval hydrodynamics. This is why CFD has not fulfilled its full
potential in aiding the day-to-day, industrial ship design process, and still largely remains an advanced
method used and developed in large scientific projects and R&D departments of multi-million-dollar
companies. Smaller ship design companies simply have no resources or permanent need for a CFD
specialist, and this is why they do not use it. So, the question is: how, when and where can CFD be useful in
a realistic, industrial, everyday ship design process? Read more and find out.
Basics of CFD
In general, CFD stands for any computational method that has to do with fluid dynamics. In professional
jargon, however, it usually denotes the family of methods that model the full Navier-Stokes equations,
where the flow nonlinearities, viscosity and turbulence are included. The most wide-spread method in this
family is the Finite Volume approach, which solves the integral form of flow equations by dividing the
volume of the computational domain into many small finite volumes. Each finite volume is assumed to be
small enough to allow the rate of change of any variable to be approximated with a linear function. These
finite volumes are assembled into a computational grid, where one or more boundaries represent an object
of interest, such as a vessel hull, an offshore platform, the inside of a pipe etc. Figure 1 shows an example
of a discretized surface of an oil tanker.

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Fig 1 Computational grid of an Oil Tanker
It is typical in the field of computational naval hydrodynamics to model water and air as ideally
incompressible fluids, since their compressibility has no or little influence on most problems in marine and
offshore industry. In that case, the equations modelling the flow are as follows:

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where the first equation represents the continuity equation, ensuring mass conservation, which reduces to
conservation of volume for incompressible flow. It simply states that the volume of fluid going into a finite
volume must be equal to the volume going out of the finite volume. The second equation denotes the
conservation of momentum, otherwise known as the Navier-Stokes equations. This vectoral equation
governs the rate of change of velocity taking into account the influence of viscosity, turbulence and
pressure gradient.
Equations (1) and (2) make a closed system that governs the flow of incompressible fluid. However, what
we need is to model two fluids at once: air and water. In order to do this, a method for describing the
interface between these two fluids is needed, also known as the free surface. This is where a bit of diversity
can be found among open-source and commercial software, since there is more than one way in which this
can be done. The two most prominent methods are the Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach (Ubbink and Issa
1999)⁠, and the Level Set approach (Sussman 1994)⁠.
The Volume of Fluid approach is based on a liquid fraction variable (usually denoted with the Greek letter
alpha, α) that states the percentage of the finite volume filled with water. For example, value 1 denotes
that the finite volume is filled entirely with water, while 0 means it contains only air. If the value is 0.3, 30%
of the volume is occupied with water and 70% with air. From this it follows that the location of the
interface is at the iso-surface corresponding to the VOF value of 0.5.
The Level Set method works on another principle: here the interface is located by using a so-called distance
function. The active variable in this method is the value of the distance function, denoting the distance of
any point in space from the free surface. When the value is zero, the point must be located at the free
surface itself.
The two methods have their respective advantages and disadvantages, which is why they both find their
place in different simulations in naval hydrodynamics. For example, VOF is very conservative, meaning that
the ratio of water and air in the simulation will be well preserved. This is important in simulations such as
wave impacts, dam breaks, green water effects, sloshing etc. Generally, it is better at handling violent free-
surface phenomena. The disadvantage is that it is prone to numerical smearing, where the thickness of the
interface becomes unrealistically large which can influence the accuracy of the simulation. Even though
various numerical tricks can be applied to reduce the effect of smearing (see e.g. interface compression
approach in Rusche 2002⁠, or ventilation suppression approach in Viola, Flay, and Ponzini 2012⁠), this can still
pose a serious problem in some simulations. The Level Set on the other hand, does not suffer from
smearing, however it is non-conservative, meaning that some loss/gain of water can be expected. This is
especially true for more violent free surface phenomena. It therefore comes naturally to use Level Set for
simulations such as calm water resistance, self-propulsion, seakeeping and other simulations where the
free surface remains relatively smooth, and where smearing would affect the accuracy. Figure 2 shows the
comparison of the liquid fraction value α distribution on the surface of a planning vessel from Pigazzini et
al. 2018, where a severe smearing is present in the VOF simulation.

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Figure 2: Comparison of the liquid fraction variable with the Volume of Fluid and Level Set method
(Pigazzini et al. 2018).⁠
CFD in practical ship design
In the process of ship design the basic hydrodynamic characteristics of the vessel need to be assessed early
in the project in order to proceed along the design spiral. These basic characteristics are ship resistance in
calm water and propulsion power. It is common practice to estimate these values using empirical methods
such as the one proposed in Holtrop and Mennen 1982⁠, or to use adjusted data from similar vessels. Both
of these methods will give a very good estimate of resistance and required propulsion powering for most
vessels if used properly. In the later stage of the project, towing tanks are hired to confirm the calculation
and to provide more accurate results, which are otherwise too expensive to be included in the early design
stage. The downside of this approach is that the designer has no way of quantifying the impact of smaller
geometrical changes to the hull early in the design process (since these are not distinguished in empirical
methods). This makes the designer more conservative and cautious, leading to less innovative designs, and
often to over-dimensioned main engines.
CFD offers a method that could provide an accurate result early in the design stage, allowing the designer
to try out different options easily and without large financial or temporal cost. I say “could” because this is
often not the case. Conducting a CFD simulation is not straight forward and requires an expensive
commercial software. Open-source CFD software also exist but are hard to use and require a specialized
user. Lately, however, more and more companies offer consulting services where they conduct the
simulations for design offices. This is an ideal set-up, fitting nicely into the idea of division of labor. The
cost, quality and speed of these services are getting better and better, reaching a point where they can
really be used in an early design stage.
As mentioned earlier, there are two main hydrodynamic problems that are of interest in a typical design
process: the calm water resistance and self-propulsion characteristics. Calm water resistance is the first
hydrodynamic property that is needed, usually across a range of vessels speeds. CFD simulations of calm
water resistance are the basis of computational marine hydrodynamics, but that does not make them trivial
at all. A high level of experience is needed to obtain a high-accuracy result: from grid generation, numerical
setup to post-processing. With most modern CFD codes, accuracy within 3% can be expected for calm
water resistance in full scale, for a computational cost of around 100 – 300 core-hours for a single
simulation, which translates to around 10 – 30 EUR of hired HPC resources. This means that the simulation
is finished after 2 – 5 hours of wall-clock time. This makes it easy to compare and test various ideas early in
the design. Figure 3 shows an example of such an application of CFD in the design process, where three
slightly different bow shapes are tested and compared in terms of total resistance and generated wave
field.
Apart from integral quantities such as resistance, dynamic sinkage and dynamic trim, the wake contour plot
in the propeller plane can be obtained with a bit of extra post-processing. Figure 4 shows a wake field
contour plot in the propeller plane, obtained from a calm water resistance CFD simulation.
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Figure 3: Comparing the wave field of three bow designs.
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Figure 4: The ship wake field in the propeller plane
Self-propusion test provides information about the required shaft power delivered to the propeller at
certain load condition and speed. It is, therefore, more complex than the calm water resistance simulation
since the propeller needs to be included in some way. There are two main ways to include the propeller
action in a CFD simulation: I) full geometrical representation of the rotating propeller; II) simplified model
of the propeller, based on the actuator disc theory. For a typical selfpropulsion simulation, the actuator disc
model is sufficient, as it will give the integral properties such as thrust and torque correctly, and it will
result in a water jet behind the propeller impacting the rudder, which is important for the overall ship
resistance. The full geometrical representation of the rotating propeller is extremely expensive due to
separation of temporal scales between the propeller rotation and the flow features around the hull. This
yields a high CPU demand that is seldom justified for self-propulsion simulation, and is reserved for more
advance studies such as propeller noise and vibration analyses, vortex formation etc.
A typical self-propulsion CFD simulation with an actuator disc model takes a similar amount of CPU
resources comparing to calm water resistance simulation, but it takes more time and effort to set-up.
Figures 5 and 6 show a self-propulsion simulation of a single screw car-carrier, and a two-screw naval
vessel, respectively. Here, the actuator disc propeller model can be seen as a circular surface where the
propeller action is applied by specifying a pressure jump corresponding to the required thrust (Jasak et al.
2018).⁠

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Figure 5: Self-propulsion simulation of a car-carrier
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Figure 6: Self-propulsion simulation of a two-screw naval vessel
Advanced CFD simulations
Apart from the two types of simulations described above, there is a plethora of other problems present in
naval and offshore hydrodynamics that can be tackled with CFD. Extreme wave impacts, green sea loads,
slamming, sloshing, seakeeping, flooding, coarse-keeping, maneuvering, just to name a few. The property
of CFD that allows it to be used on such a wide range of applications is the generality of the method. At the
base level CFD does not hold any presumptions about the flow phenomena at hand, such as assumptions
about the wave steepness, single-valued free-surface elevation, irrotational flow, small changes in the
wetter surface of the hull and so on. This allows the method to be applied to many different problems,
although difficulties can be expected in uncharted waters, i.e. phenomena which has not been simulated
before.
Below are a few figures showing some of the phenomena that can be simulated using CFD. Figure 7 shows
an image from a simulation of a crabbing maneuver. The ship has two rudders deflected to full starboard,
the two propellers working in the opposite directions: port side propeller is running full ahead, and the
starboard side full astern. The bow thruster is pushing the bow in the port side direction, resulting in a
sideways motion of the vessel called crabbing. Figure 8 shows a green water event impacting a breakwater
of a container vessel. These simulations serve as input for pressure loads in a FEM analysis of the
breakwater structure, or any deck structure in general. In Figure 9 a simulation of a course keeping
experiment is shown with two moving rudders and two propellers. The autopilot is instructed to keep the
vessel on a steady course in heavy stern-quartering waves. The simulation presented in Figure 10 is
conducted to analyze the effect of a passing 40-meter motor yacht on the vessels moored in the mini-
marina.

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Figure 7: Simulation of a crabbing manoeuvre

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Figure 8: Green water event simulation on a container vessel

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Figure 9: Course keeping simulation with dynamic rudders and PID controllers in heavy weather
conditions
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Figure 10: Study of the effect of a passing vessel on the wave field in-side of the marina

Conclusion
Computational Fluid Dynamics is a versatile and very powerful engineering tool which can offer an
unprecedented level of detail of various flow phenomena. At the same time, however, it is highly complex
to use and demands relatively large amounts of CPU resources comparing to most engineering tools. As
technology progresses, the CPU resources become less expensive by the minute, eliminating the latter
issue. As we mentioned earlier, a calm water resistance CFD simulation can be performed for as little as 10
– 30 EUR of HPC hire costs, rendering it accessible to most companies in the industry. The issue, however, is
in the complexity of the tool, which unlike the cheapening of CPU resources, has not reduced with the
advancement of technology. This entails a human resource problem, namely it is not easy to find experts in
CFD for naval hydrodynamics, not to mentioned the cost of such employees. It is therefore not surprising
that very little CFD is being used in day-to-day ship design projects. It is for this reason that we see an
uptake of consultancy companies offering CFD simulation services for the marine industry, which could
prove to be exactly what is necessary for this sort of tool to be widely applied.
The two most valuable calculation types that CFD can offer to the marine industry are the calm water
resistance simulations and sefl-propulsion simulations. Using CFD to determine calm water resistance and
propulsion power could completely revolutionize the way ships are designed, by giving an opportunity to
obtain high accuracy results early in the design process. Advanced CFD simulations such as wave loads,
maneuvering, seakeeping, green water simulations and others also find their place in more complex and
expensive projects, offering a deeper insight about complex phenomena important for the efficiency and
safety of marine objects.
References
Holtrop, J., and G. G. J. Mennen. 1982. “An Approximate Power Prediction Method.” International
Shipbuilding Progress. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13398-014-0173-7.2.
Jasak, Hrvoje, Vuko Vukčević, Inno Gatin, and Igor Lalović. 2018. “CFD Validation and Grid Sensitivity
Studies of Full Scale Ship Self Propulsion.” International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean
Engineering, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnaoe.2017.12.004.
Pigazzini, Riccardo, Thomas Puzzer, Simone Martini, Mitja Morgut, Giorgio Contento, Inno Gatin, Vuko
Vukčević, et al. 2018. “Experimental and Numerical Prediction of the Hydrodynamic Performances of a 65
Ft Planing Hull in Calm Water.” In NAV International Conference on Ship and Shipping Research.
https://doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-870-9-480.
Rusche, Henrik. 2002. “Computational Fluid Dynamics of Dispersed Two-Phase Flows at High Phase
Fractions.” PhD Thesis. https://doi.org/10.1145/1806799.1806850.
Sussman, Mark. 1994. “A Level Set Approach for Computing Solutions to Incompressible Two-Phase Flow.”
Journal of Computational Physics. https://doi.org/10.1006/jcph.1994.1155.
Ubbink, O., and R. I. Issa. 1999. “A Method for Capturing Sharp Fluid Interfaces on Arbitrary Meshes.”
Journal of Computational Physics. https://doi.org/10.1006/jcph.1999.6276.
Viola, I. M., R. G.J. Flay, and R. Ponzini. 2012. “CFD Analysis of the Hydrodynamic Performance of Two
Candidate America’s Cup AC33 Hulls.” Transactions of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects Part B:
International Journal of Small Craft Technology. https://doi.org/10.3940/rina.ijsct.2012.b1.113.
Disclaimer:
The views, information, or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily represent those of TheNavalArch Pte Ltd and its employees

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Inno Gatin
CFD Consultant and Engineer, Wikki Ltd.
Dr. Inno Gatin is a naval architect specialized in computational naval hydrodynamics, with an academic and
commercial experience in CFD modelling, development, consultancy and simulation services. During his
academic work he performed research and development related to CFD models dedicated to extreme wave
loads during events such as green water, sloshing and slamming. He also dedicated a large part of the
academic career to calm water and self propulsion calculations, as well as seakeeping studies. Working as a
CFD consultant and engineer for Wikki Ltd., he is involved in development, maintenance and support of the
Naval Hydro Pack, the in-house CFD software for naval hydrodynamics. Together with his colleagues he
invested considerable effort in automating basic CFD simulations for the marine industry, with the goal to
democratize its application. He can be reached at i.gatin@wikki.co.uk.