Fidelity CFD: A Lifeline for Maritime Industry Challenges

The maritime industry is at the leading edge of technological innovation, addressing critical challenges concerning environmental sustainability and enhancing operational efficiency. With over 80% of global goods transported by sea, improving marine engineering cannot be overstated. As the world faces rising fuel costs and stricter regulations, the need for advanced simulation tools becomes increasingly vital. Research indicates that optimizing vessel designs using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can reduce fuel consumption by 13%, leading to significant cost reductions and a smaller carbon footprint.

This blog post will outline the challenges faced by the marine industry and explore how Fidelity CFD can effectively address these issues. Furthermore, we will present a few real-world case studies that have contributed to advancements in velocity prediction, seakeeping, and the design of high-speed yachts.

How Fidelity CFD Can Help Address Challenges in the Marine Industry

The maritime industry faces many challenges, from lowering fuel consumption to meeting regulatory requirements. Fidelity CFD solutions are pivotal in addressing these challenges providing a robust platform for innovation, optimization, and comprehensive analysis.

Fuel Consumption Reduction

With increasing fuel costs and heightened environmental concerns, reducing fuel consumption has become a crucial objective for the maritime industry. Fidelity CFD provides advanced strategies for analyzing and optimizing vessel propulsion systems, including detailed simulations of propeller performance. These simulations facilitate precise modeling of propeller fluid dynamics, allowing for the identification of design changes that enhance propulsion efficiency.

Contra-rotating marine propeller simulation

Fidelity CFD software facilitates the integration of Wind-Aided Propulsion System (WAPS) models into CFD simulations to accurately represent and analyze the impact on vessel performance and behavior. As a result, it provides valuable insights into fuel efficiency, emissions reduction, and overall operational effectiveness, allowing maritime engineers to optimize ship designs for sustainable and eco-friendly operations.

Complex and Large-Scale Simulations

The complexity of maritime environments requires consideration of various factors, including wave-added resistance, maneuvering, and wind loads. Automation and dedicated workflows in Fidelity CFD enable engineers to quickly iterate their designs and perform extensive optimization studies, ensuring that vessels operate optimally and reliably.

Cavitation

Cavitation is a common phenomenon in marine engineering, characterized by the formation of vapor bubbles that occur when the local static pressure of a liquid drops below its vapor pressure. These vapor bubbles collapse violently when they move into areas of higher pressure, causing localized damage to surrounding surfaces. Cavitation primarily occurs around propellers, pumps, hydrofoils, and other submerged components, negatively affecting their performance and efficiency. Accurately capturing cavitation enables engineers to optimize designs, minimizing cavitation-induced degradation that impacts propulsion efficiency, fuel consumption, and operational cost.

Simulation of hydrofoil with cavitation pockets using adaptive grid refinement

Regulatory Compliance

Regulatory compliance is a crucial factor in advancing the maritime industry, and engineers need to ensure that vessel designs meet the latest maritime regulations and standards. By incorporating compliance into the core of the design process, Fidelity CFD enables design for optimal performance and efficiency while also fulfilling their responsibilities for environmental stewardship and passenger safety.

Through ongoing innovation and the use of advanced simulation technologies, the maritime industry is well-equipped to tackle the challenges of the 21st century with confidence and creativity.

Real-World Case Studies

Fidelity CFD enables engineers to innovate and address maritime industry challenges, from optimizing yacht hydrodynamics to implementing cutting-edge propulsion systems.

Finot-Conq Designs Award-Winning Yachts

Over the last five decades, Finot-Conq has established itself as a leader in yacht design, producing over 45,000 boats, including production and racing vessels. A key to their success is the use of advanced simulation tools from Cadence, particularly the Velocity Prediction Program (VPP) in Fidelity CFD, which has reduced design evaluation calculations from 100–200 to fewer than ten. This efficiency has dramatically sped up the development of new yachts.

To further enhance their design capabilities, Finot-Conq expanded its computational resources with over 400,000 CPU hours from Cadence OnCloud to expand their on-premise compute capacity (dual-socket server with AMD EPYC 7773X CPUs) on-demand, effectively doubling their simulation capacity.

Damen Shipyard Improves Vessel Stability Through CFD Wind Studies

Damen, a global shipbuilding conglomerate with over 50 shipyards in 120 countries, is enhancing its design process by integrating marine simulations throughout the workflow, leveraging Fidelity CFD and Cadence's cloud solutions. While previously focused on bare hull resistance analyses, Damen is now exploring more complex simulations, including propulsion, maneuvering, and wind studies. Wind effects significantly impact vessel navigation and stability, particularly in challenging environments. Traditionally, wind tunnel testing was used to analyze these effects, but it was costly and time-consuming.

The FCS3307 vessel is simulated within a computational wind tunnel domain to analyze severe side wind conditions

Damen Shipyards and Cadence collaborated to address stability challenges in the DAMEN Fast Crew Support (FCS) 3307 vessel, susceptible to severe side winds. To comply with International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulation 749.18 regarding transversal stability, Damen and Cadence implemented a process to accurately model wind effects, significantly reducing the need for costly physical wind tunnel tests. Validated against test results, engineers leverage Fidelity CFD  efficiently for design and validation.

Foreseeing the Future of Simulation-driven Marine Industry

The maritime industry is at a turning point. Advanced simulation tools are vital for addressing today’s challenges, such as improving fuel efficiency, meeting regulatory compliance, and ensuring environmental sustainability. By adopting innovative solutions, the industry can enhance performance, ensure safety, and promote sustainability, paving the way for a more efficient and responsible maritime future.

Read the eBook Engineer’s Guide to Simulating Marine Engineering to gain deeper insights into the challenges of the marine industry and how Fidelity CFD can address them.