Analysis of Generic IGBEM for Lifting Hydrofoils

Abstract

Today the most crucial aspect in the preliminary vessel design stage is to make it as green/blue as possible. One of the exciting goals is the minimisation of vessel resistance. The use of hydrofoils to reduce the vessel draught and consequently, reduction in the vessel resistance is today one of the hottest design topics, especially for catamaran passenger vessels. In the present work, we discuss the issues related to the implementation of Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) Boundary Element Method (BEM) for the calculation of the hydrodynamic properties of lifting hydrofoils. The use of IGBEM allows numerical calculation of foil hydrodynamic properties without the traditional step of mesh generation using the CAD geometry directly. The analysis relies on the NURBS basis function with the generic Galerkin approach allowing identical solutions procedures for 2D or 3D problems. Method accuracy and computational times for a different number of Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in 2D are investigated.