A stable and adaptive semi-Lagrangian potential model for unsteady and nonlinear ship-wave interactions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel semi-Lagrangian potential flow model for simulating unsteady, nonlinear water waves generated by ships, employing adaptive discretization techniques and stabilization methods for improved accuracy and robustness.

Contribution

It develops an innovative semi-Lagrangian framework with adaptive boundary element and BDF methods, incorporating SUPG stabilization for better simulation of ship-wave interactions.

Findings

Model accurately predicts wave patterns for a Wigley hull in calm water.

Adaptive discretization improves computational efficiency and stability.

Preliminary results show good agreement with experimental data.

Abstract

We present an innovative numerical discretization of the equations of inviscid potential flow for the simulation of three dimensional unsteady and nonlinear water waves generated by a ship hull advancing in water. The equations of motion are written in a semi-Lagrangian framework, and the resulting integro-differential equations are discretized in space via an adaptive iso-parametric collocation Boundary Element Method, and in time via adaptive implicit Backward Differentiation Formulas (BDF) with variable step and variable order. When the velocity of the advancing ship hull is non-negligible, the semi-Lagrangian formulation (also known as Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian formulation, or ALE) of the free surface equations contains dominant transport terms which are stabilized with a Streamwise Upwind Petrov-Galerkin (SUPG) method. The SUPG stabilization allows automatic and robust adaptation of the spatial discretization with unstructured quadrilateral grids. Preliminary results are presented where we compare our numerical model with experimental results on the case of a Wigley hull advancing in calm water with fixed sink and trim.