Numerical simulations of viscous flow around a a fully appended hull with enforced motion

Numerical simulations of the flow past the KVLCC2 MOERI tanker with prescribed motion are carried out. The ship model is considered in fully appended configuration, i.e. the rudder and the propeller are included. The motions considered are the straight ahead and the pure sway manoeuvres. The analysis of the flow field is carried out by the numerical solution of the unsteady RANS equations; to this aim, the solver developed at INSEAN has been employed. In this work, free surface effects are neglected, whereas the presence of the propeller is taken into account by a suitable non-iterative model. Body motion is handled by means of an in-house dynamical overlapping grid approach. An analysis of the flow field, in terms of pressure distribution, axial velocity and vorticity field is carried out for the straight ahead manoeuvre both in the unpropelled and propelled conditions, as well as in the propelled pure sway manoeuvre. The effects of the operating propeller and the unsteady motion of the hull on the vortical structures are analyzed.