Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations of Ship Airwake

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of ship airwakes are discussed in this article. CFD is used to simulate the airwakes of landing helicopter assault (LHA) and landing platform dock-17 (LPD-17) classes of ships. The focus is on capturing the massively separated flow from sharp edges of blunt bodies, while ignoring the viscous effects. A parallel, finite-volume flow solver is used with unstructured grids on full-scale ship models for the CFD calculations. Both steady-state and time-accurate results are presented for a wind speed of 15.43 m/s (30 knot) and for six different wind-over-deck angles. The article also reviews other computational and experimental ship airwake research.