KRISO Container Ship (KCS) – Wave Breaking

The aim of this test case is to assess the capability of CFD to predict unsteady breaking waves around ship bows under high Froude number conditions, provide more insight into the underlying physics, and assess the performance of air-water modelling methods such as geometric and algebraic VOF, as well as level-set approaches. Wave breaking commonly occurs in the bow and stern areas of a ship at sea and involves complex two-phase flow and unsteady hydrodynamic phenomena, which is challenging for both CFD simulations and physical understanding. The KRISO Container Ship (KCS) was chosen for this case and the fixed trim and sinkage condition was adjusted to force unsteady plunging breaking of the bow wave at high speeds. Model tests were conducted to measure the mean and fluctuating wave elevation around the bow, flow velocities, and the forces acting on the model. The metrics to be investigated include resistance, heave force, pitch moment, mean and RMS wave elevations, slice cuts of and time histories of mean and RMS wave elevations, 3D air tubes and vortical structures, and low and high oscillation frequencies.