Free-Surface Fluid-Object Interaction for the Large-Scale Computation of Ship Hydrodynamics Phenomena

Abstract : The overarching objective of this work is to develop and implement a robust, accurate and scalable numerical methodology for simulating air-water free-surface flow, fluid-object interaction (FOI), and fluid-structure interaction (FSI) phenomena for complex geometries, and with no limitations on the motion of the free surface, and with particular emphasis on ship hydrodynamics. The following specific research objectives were identified for this project: 1) Development of a theoretical framework for free-surface flow, FOI and FSI that is a suitable starting point for discretization with Finite Element or Isogeometric methods; 2) Development of computational procedures (i.e., geometry modeling, meshing, and analysis software) in support of this framework with emphasis on surface ship hydrodynamics; 3) Verification and Validation of the implemented numerical technology on the well-known benchmark examples and lab-scale and full-scale surface vessels.