Marine CFD

Venue: Southampton, UK

Dynamics (CFD) is an increasingly important tool for analysing flows around ships and propulsors. It is used to solve a wide range of maritime applications from resistance prediction to slamming load calculation. It can provide important insights into physical flow characteristics and can offer an economic way to investigate design options.

Generic CFD codes often lack some features and capabilities needed to address specific maritime applications. The presence of the free surface provides a major departure from conventional CFD applications. The need to represent this fluid interface accurately presents a considerable challenge, not least because its behaviour can vary considerably within the computational domain, and as a function of hull form and speed.

Advances in computer technologies over the past tow decades are slowly turning the dream of the complete numerical towing tank or 'virtual basin' into a reality. However, today's methods still lack the accuracy to match results obtained in real-life experiments. While it is unlikely that a single CFD tool suitable for all applications will be developed, there are many synergies that could be better exploited. The three major requirements for practical engineering applications are computational speed, accuracy and integrated into the overall design process.

This international conference, organised by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects, will offer delegates an opportunity to meet and discuss the latest developments and practical marine application of CFD. The programme will also include software workshops which will give delegates a chance to participate in and discuss demonstrations of the latest CFD software.

Papers are invited in such areas as:

• Practical applications of CFD techniques to marine design.
• Experimental and computational validation and benchmarking
• Improvements in automatic mesh generation
• Developments in adaptive grid generation
• Coupling CAD and CFD software
• Development of quality standards and best practice.