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MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2

Computational Fluid Dynamics for the Design of Energy Efficient and Environment Friendly Marine Propulsors

Alternative title: Numeriske strømningsberegninger for design av energieffektive og miljøvennlige maritime propulsorer

Awarded: NOK 13.3 mill.

Project Number:

327745

Project Period:

2021 - 2024

Organisation:

Partner countries:

Six industrial companies in Norway, delivering propulsion systems, have joined forces with two research partners for this project. The focus is development of the next generation propulsion design and analysis tool for industrial use that incorporates the traditional calculation approaches for early-phase design tasks and viscous flow methods for advanced simulations for a range of different propulsion systems under different operation conditions. This will enable more reliable prediction of the performance of different propulsion systems. The project will extend existing flow analysis tools for propulsion analyses with modelling of viscous flow at full-scale using Computation Fluid Dynamics. This will be a step beyond the current state-of-the-art in the industrial CFD. Verification and validation as regards computational mesh, turbulence model and multiphase model are of paramount importance. The development involves the use of an open source CFD library and development of automated, best practice simulation setups customized to specific simulation scenarios. Method validation will be performed against experimental databases, and by comparisons with commercial CFD codes. Customization and automation of simulation setups will greatly reduce time, costs and user errors for the industrial users.

The project is a cooperation between 6 companies in Norway delivering propulsion systems and two research partners. The focus is development of the next generation propulsion design and analysis tool for industrial use that incorporates the traditional calculation approaches for early-phase design tasks and high-fidelity viscous flow methods for advanced simulations for a range of different propulsion systems under different operation conditions. This will enable more reliable prediction of the performance of different propulsion systems as model test suffer from scale effects that may give misleading assessments. The parametric model and workflow functionality will allow the users to perform custom design optimization of propulsion systems and enable design exploration studies at a system level. The project will extend existing numerical tools for propulsion analyses with explicit modelling of viscous flow at full-scale using Computation Fluid Dynamics. This will be a step beyond the current state-of-the-art in the industrial CFD. Verification and validation as regards computational mesh, turbulence model and multiphase model are of paramount importance. The development involves the use of an open source CFD library and development of automated, best practice simulation setups customized to specific simulation scenarios. CFD methods will include the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) method with two-equation turbulence models, and more sophisticated turbulence modelling methods such as Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) or Large Eddy Simulation (LES). Open source CFD libraries enable direct modifications and extensions of the numerical models implemented in the code, which is normally impossible with closed source software. Method validation will be performed against experimental databases, and by comparisons with commercial CFD codes. Customization and automation of simulation setups will greatly reduce time, costs and user errors for the industrial users.

Funding scheme:

MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2