Development of hybrid URANS–LES methods for flow simulation in the ship stern area

The paper presents the results of the application of a new hybrid URANS–LES method for the investigations of the ship wake behind the tanker KVLCC2. The switching between URANS and LES models is based on the ratio between the turbulence scale and the cell size of the mesh. Ship resistance, fields of the axial velocity and turbulent kinetic energy in the propeller plane are calculated and compared with measurements. Much attention is paid to the analysis of the unsteady velocities, their PDF distributions and spectra. Numerical analysis shows that the instantaneous velocities deviate substantially from their mean values which are usually used as the estimated velocities in modern engineering methodologies. The thrust variation in the unsteady wake is more than twice as large as that in the time averaged (frozen) wake. The results of the present study point out that the unsteadiness in the wake behind full ships can be very large and should be taken into account when propulsion and unsteady loadings are determined.