HYDRODYNAMIC PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF HYDROFOIL SUPPORTED HIGH-SPEED VESSEL USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

Abstract

Ships experience large drag force when moving through water. This study deals with a high-speed vessel that has a hydrofoil connected at the bottom to minimize this drag. The objective of the study is to determine whether the drag forces and the lift forces experienced by the vessel change with the addition of a hydrofoil. The hydrofoil when flowing through water causes the flow to deflect downward, causing a difference in pressure at the top and bottom of the hydrofoil. Thus, it imposes an additional lift force on the hull that tends to decrease the area of contact of the hull with water, thus decreasing the drag force. An existing vessel is taken from the commercial software Maxsurf and then the hydrofoil is attached. A multiphase computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis is done to determine the drag force and the lift force using ANSYS Fluent for several angles of attack of the hydrofoil and the results are compared. The analysis is also done for a set of four different speeds and compared. Due to the attachment of the hydrofoil, drag force decreases but with increasing speed and angle of attack, drag force increases which is still lower than the corresponding bare hull drag force. With increasing speed and increasing angle of attack, the lift force also increased.

Keywords: Hydrofoil, drag force, multiphase CFD