Damen: Wind Study On A Slender Boat Design Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

DAMEN and Numeca develop a CFD methodology to proof a vessel has sufficient transversal stability to resist over-rolling in severe side winds.

With more than 80 percent of the total global trade being transported through international shipping, the world relies on a safe, secure and efficient international shipping industry. Being a truly international industry, it can only operate effectively if regulations and standards are agreed, adopted and implemented on an international basis. The IMO (International Maritime Organization) is the United Nations specialized agency that provides the regulatory framework for this process.

One of those regulations, IMO regulation 749.18, ‘Severe wind and rolling criterion’, ensures a vessel has sufficient transversal stability to resist over-rolling in severe side winds. Due to the necessarily conservative nature of the regulation (enabling it to be broadly applicable to a multitude of vessels), slender vessels like the DAMEN Fast Crew Support (FCS) 3307 have difficulties in satisfying the empirical requirements of the regulation, therefore expensive experimentation is needed to demonstrate the vessel’s compliance with the regulation.

In order to reduce the cost of proving compliance, DAMEN, in partnership with its Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code supplier NUMECA International, developed a CFD methodology that can replace this experimentation.

They conducted a CFD validation campaign that numerically replicated the wind tunnel test of a DAMEN FCS3307 vessel.

As the main motivation for the CFD approach is saving cost and time, it is crucial for the methodology to not only be sufficiently accurate, but also have the lowest possible computational cost and turnaround time. The methodology reflects these aims.

Read all about the results of this validation campaign IN THIS PAPER. Or watch the video (1 minute):