Application of CFD in ship engineering design practice and ship hydrodynamics

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has progressed rapidly in the past fifty years. It has been used in many industrial fields and plays an irreplaceable role in engineering design and scientific research. However, due to the existence of free surface and complex ship geometry. Ship CFD has fallen behind its counterparts in other industrial fields. But with the recent breakthrough in ship CFD technology, practical applications of CFD in analyzing and predicting ship performance now become possible. In this paper, we shall present some of our recent study in the numerical simulation of wake wave pattern and the resistance of a surface ship. Some progress on the wake simulation of a fully appended ship is also discussed. Through our work, the huge potential of CFD application in ship hydrodynamics performance prediction is demonstrated.