NGCM-0037: Efficient Overlapping-Grid CFD Technique for a self-propelled ship

The challenge of designing modern ships that are capable of achieving complex manoeuvres or hold dynamic positions within an ocean environment requires a detailed understanding of the flow interactions between rotating propulsors and movement of control surfaces. Such computations are time consuming and are challenging to implement with conventional mesh generation techniques. The goal of this project is to implement an computationally efficient overlapping-mesh capability in CFD code ReFRESCO (www.refresco.org) for ship hull, propulsors/thrusters and dynamic control surfaces. Overlapping-grid techniques have been already implemented in other CFD codes. However, the current implementations are often restricted as to how they are applied across massively parallel computers, have limited efficiency and this often explains their restricted application. Additionally, there are several new open-source initiatives on overlapping-grids which tackle some of these bottlenecks that should be investigated. Such developments will require ingredients of Computational Science, Data-structures, Graphics Visualization algorithms, Parallelization Techniques as of typical CFD numerical topics. In this project we propose to join all these components and derive a complete efficient overlapping-grid algorithm for the current, and next-generation HPC hardware architectures, thoroughly tested using modern code and solution verification & validation techniques, and optimized for hydrodynamic problems. As an ultimately complex application to be tackled in this project, consider a ship in waves, fully appended, with working propellers/thrusters and active rudders.

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Professor Stephen Turnock, Fluid Structures Interactions group, Email: [Email Address Removed], Tel: +44 (0) 2380 59 2488.