MARIN – The Numerical Towing Tank #SWI2019

The Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) has been expanding the boundaries of maritime understanding of hydrodynamic research for over eighty years. MARIN has a dual mission: to provide the industry with innovative design solutions and to carry out advanced research for the benefit of the entire maritime sector.

Starting in the 1930s, one of our main activities is predicting the power requirements of a ship using self-propulsion towing tank tests. With increasing computational power and improved simulation capabilities, a numerical towing tank is becoming reality. These types of simulations are still computationally intensive and typically take a long time to converge in order for the ship to attain its correct trim, to obtain the near stationary wave pattern and developed boundary layer. At the same time, a fast-rotating propeller behind the ship requires a very small time step in order to accurately calculate the flow around the propeller blade and on the hull. Clearly, the two different time scales are at odds and an efficient balanced approach to solve this problem is required.

MARIN’s challenge for the SWI 2019 is: Develop an optimal start-up procedure for a numerical self-propulsion test.