Numerical Investigation into the Effect of Damage Openings on Ship Hydrodynamics by the Overset Mesh Technique

Damage stability is difficult to assess due to the complex hydrodynamic phenomena regarding interactions between fluid and structures. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the flooding progression and motion responses is important for improving ship safety. In this paper, numerical simulations are performed on the damaged DTMB 5415 ship at zero speed. All calculation are carried out using CD Adapco Star CCM + software, investigating the effect of damage openings on ship hydrodynamics, including the side damage and the bottom damage. The computational domain is modelled by the overset mesh and solved using the unsteady Reynold-average Navier-Stokes (URANS) solver. An implicit solver is used to find the field of all hydrodynamics unknown quantities, in conjunction with an iterative solver to solve each time step. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is applied to visualize the flooding process and capture the complex hydrodynamics behaviors. The simulation results indicated that two damage locations produce the characteristic flooding processes, and the motion responses corresponding to the hydrodynamic behaviors are different. Through comparative analysis, due to the difference between the horizontal impact on the longitudinal bulkhead and the vertical impact on the bottom plate, the bottom damage scenario always has a larger heel angle than the side damage scenario in the same period. However, the pitch motions are basically consistent. Generally, the visualization of the flooding process is efficient to explain the causes of the motion responses. Also, when the damage occurs, regardless of the bottom damage or the side damage, the excessive heel angle due to asymmetric flooding is often a threat to ship survivability with respect to the pitch angle.