Grounded Ambitions: A Lean Approach for Assessing Beachability in Concept Design

Abstract

Littoral operations have become an increasing interest for defense stakeholders over the last several decades. Many navies currently operate ship-to-shore assets that are designed to travel shorter distances exclusively in the littorals between a ship and the beach. New concepts are being designed to transit much longer distances from shore-to-shore in both blue water and littoral regions. This Concept of Employment (CONEMP) drives these ships to displacements that are orders of magnitude larger. Compared to smaller vessels where seakeeping and maneuverability performance in the surf-zone are a significant area of interest, larger vessels have a comparatively greater risk with respect to the ability of the ship to get far enough up a beach to safely deliver assets and then get off the beach. This research presents the foundation for a new simulation tool to analyze how far up the beach a ship will be able to get given loading condition, initial speed, beach condition, and hull shape. The focus of this research is to provide a low computational-cost method for analyzing the beachability of a ship that still considers the dominating physical phenomena of grounding at early stages of design. The tool will need much faster turnaround times than high-fidelity Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) or Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulations to support the rapid and evolving environment of concept design timelines.