NGCM-38: Efficient Overlapping-Grid CFD Technique for Hydrodynamic Problems

There is a significant increase in the need to use floating platforms in the deep and shallow water environments. Examples include developments of floating offshore wind turbines, wave energy systems, floating LNG storage tankers as well as vortex induced motion of more conventional semi-submersibles. The relative motion of the stochastic wave environment and the floating structure provides a significant challenge to conventional relative mesh motions. The goal of this project is to implement an efficient overlapping-grids free surface capability in CFD code ReFRESCO (www.refresco.org) that is suitable for large relative motions of a floating offshore structure in a seaway. Free surface overlapping-grid techniques have been already implemented in other CFD codes. However, as it has been seen in several recent publications the current implementations struggle with the maintenance of a high quality free surface interface as the overset meshes translate/rotate relative to each other. These schemes are often inefficient, not fully-parallelized or not adequate for the current hardware, and not accurate enough at the overlapping interfaces, and thus not used widely. Additionally, there are several new open-source initiatives on overlapping-grids which tackle some of these bottlenecks that should be investigated. Such techniques have 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 free surface overlapping-grid algorithm for the current, and next-generation HPC hardware architectures. Applications of this technology include a ship/offshore construction in waves, sailing/drifting close to a fixed object (harbour or another ship).

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.

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