Investigation of the Flow Field of a Ship in Planar Motion Mechanism Tests by the Vortex Identification Method

Planar motion mechanism (PMM) tests provide a means of obtaining the hydrodynamic derivatives needed to assess ship maneuverability properties. In this paper, the self-developed computational fluid dynamic (CFD) solver based on the open source code platform OpenFOAM, naoe-FOAM-SJTU, associated with the overset grid method is used to simulate the complex viscous flow field of PMM tests for a benchmark model Yupeng Ship. This paper discusses the effect of several parameters such as the drift angle and period on the hydrodynamic performance of the ship and compares the time histories of the predicted forces and moments with experimental data. To investigate the complex viscous flows with a large separation, four vortex identification methods are used to capture the vortex structures. The results show that the forces and moments are in good agreement in static drift and dynamic tests. By comparing the vortex structures, it is found that the third generation vortex identification methods, OmegaR and Liutex, are able to more accurately capture the vortex structures. The paper concludes that the present numerical scheme is reliable and the third generation vortex identification methods are more suitable for displaying the vortex structures in a complex viscous flow field.