Assessment of experiments and CFD for the semi-planing R/V Athena Model in waves

Abstract The advancements in numerical tools has opened the opportunity for simulations to provide a more accurate prediction of the structural response of a semi-planing hull than the current empirical methods that use historical data from early generation hull designs. Numerical tools first need to be able to predict the hydrodynamic response of a semi-planing hull before attempting to predict the structural response. To prove this, an extensive study of a semi-planing hull in waves has been conducted where the experiments were designed to work concurrently with simulation tools to understand the underlying hydrodynamics. This work independently evaluated the effect of speed, wave steepness, and wavelength on the hydrodynamic response. In addition to the experimental results, a comprehensive analysis quantified the uncertainty and showed small differences between methods for the analysis. As part of the unified approach to this study, the test setup of the experiments have been well documented to improve the accuracy of the initial conditions in the simulations. The assessment the simulations showed the usefulness of simulations by predicting time history trends that matched the experiments well. The simulations were able to predict the vertical accelerations well while the error trends were larger for heave, pitch, and pressure.