The investigation of a sliding mesh model for hydrodynamic analysis of a suboff model in turbulent flow fields

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based simulation using a finite volume code for a full-appendage DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) SUBOFF model was investigated with a sliding mesh model in a multi-zone fluid domain. Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) equations were coupled with a Menter’s shear stress transport (SST) k-ω turbulence closure based on the Boussinesq approximation. In order to simulate unsteady motions and capture unsteady interactions, the sliding mesh model was employed to simulate flows in the fluid domain that contains multiple moving zones. The pressure-based solver, semi-implicit method for the pressure linked equations-consistent (SIMPLEC) algorithm was employed for incompressible flows based on the predictor-corrector approach in a segregated manner. After the grid independence test, the numerical simulation was validated by comparison with the published experimental data and other numerical results. In this study, the capability of the CFD simulation with the sliding mesh model was well demonstrated to conduct the straight-line towing tests by analyzing hydrodynamic characteristics, viz. resistance, vorticity, frictional coefficients, and pressure coefficients.