Numerical Studies on the Hydrodynamic Performance and the Startup Stability of High Speed Ship Hulls with Air Plenums and Air Tunnels

One solution to reduce the frictional drag of a ship is to equip the hull with air plenums or planing air tunnels. The successful development of such advanced ship hulls requires numerical prediction tools for design parametric studies. In this paper, we describe a numerical method based on the boundary element method that incorporates physics based models for the air plenums and a compressible flow model for the airflow in the planing air tunnels. Results of parametric studies over a range of hull form parameters are presented and the effects of air plenum parameters on the ship startup stability are investigated. The developed numerical method is used to establish trends of the total resistance and its dependence on the Froude number. Application of the method to a hull with planing tunnels is also presented, and the versatility of the code in dealing with air plenums and air tunnels is demonstrated.