A Study of LES Methods for Simulation of Ship Airwakes

Abstract

The ship airwake is one of the most important components of a ship-helicopter dynamic interface simulation as the airwake determines many of the operating limits during dynamic interface operations. As part of the development of a dynamic interface simulation we have compared different Large Eddy Simulation (LES) methods for simulating ship airwakes using two test cases: a cube in a channel and a simplified frigate shape. The cube case was used to compare a compressible Implicit Large Eddy Simulation (ILES) solver (Flamenco) with compressible and incompressible standard LES solvers (OpenFOAM). The simplified frigate shape case compares LES with and without wall modelling with ILES and provides validation over a range of wind-over-deck angles. The results are presented as comparisons of time-averaged velocity and pressure profiles with experimental data and flow field visualizations. The comparisons between LES techniques may be used to inform simulation design choices for flow around ships and other sharp-edged bluff-bodies.

Rotorcraft and Ship Airwakes Simulations Using Immersed Boundary Method

“…The SFS1 is a representative geometry of a frigate with a wind tunnel experiment dataset available [4] for the validation of CFD methods for ship airwakes simulations [8]. Ship airwakes are complex flow fields that include separated flows from sharp edges of a ship, flow recirculation, and coherent vortical structures.…”