Wave induced motions and loads, Seakeeping
Cape Horn Engineering offers simulations of ships and offshore structures in waves to:
- Assess added resistance
- Assess global and local loads for optimizing structures
- Assess loss of performance due to slamming (bottom, bow flare, wet-deck), green water, sloshing in tanks, well docks, and decks etc.
We have performed seakeeping analysis on:
Advantages of simulations compared to tank testing
- All simulations are at full scale
- Simulations use realistic inertias and centers of gravity, something not feasible in tank testing
- Oblique incident waves coming from any direction can be simulated, Tank testing is usually limited to head waves only
- Decomposition of individual forces and moments for the hull and each appendage
- Precise analysis of motion velocities, accelerations, and trajectories of the body
- Flow visualization and animations to gain insight and understanding about differences between designs
- Simulations are 100% reproduceable
- Hull or appendage shapes can be easily changed without building new models
- It is easy to test many design configuration i.e. to swap appendages
- Easily test in a variety of sailing conditions (speeds, wave characteristics) to compare performance
- Time and cost reduction
Disadvantages of simulations compared to tank testing
- Designers in general have not become confident in CFD results
- Validation of results can be difficult and costly
- Simulation of irregular seas is too time consuming. The same difficulty applies to tank testing; however other computational methods based on potential theory are well established for seakeeping analysis