Author Description

High-speed boats that plane out of the water for reduced resistance are called planing crafts. When planing, the hull is mainly supported by the dynamic pressure loads rather than the hydrostatic buoyant force. A better physical understanding of the dynamic response of these crafts in calm water and rough water conditions and its relationship to hull loading is required for improved design and optimization. The loads and performance of a high-speed hull operating in rough water impact consideration several factors including personnel comfort and safety as well as structural design. The current work aims at developing high-performance computational models and validating the simulation results against experimental measurements for a Generic Prismatic Planing Hull (GPPH) operating in calm water and slamming when running in head waves (both regular and irregular). Previous calm water studies showed difficulties in predicting the calm water running trim. Using dynamic overset grids and accurate hydrostatic set-up conditions and hull geometry, we were able to reduce the calm water prediction errors to 2.52%D for resistance, sinkage, and trim. Previous computational studies of high-speed hulls in rough water focused primarily on simple geometries, like a wedge, and sphere at zero speed and for strip theory predictions. This study provides URANS capabilities for high-speed planing hulls in regular and irregular waves. Specifically, it was determined that small time steps and large grids are needed to resolve the spray root and the temporal evolution of the impulsive local slamming pressure loads. In rough water simulations, re-entering and emerging peaks are shown during slamming events. The re-entering slam is due to the hull dropping into the water surface after becoming airborne, and the emerging slam is due to the hull emerging from the next wave peak and being pushed airborne again. From irregular wave results, extreme slam events are determined on which a correlation