Simulation-driven design of a fast monohull

A fast monohull was designed and optimized, using CAESES® for parametric modeling and optimization coupled to STAR-CCM + for free-surface RANS simulations. The boat is a 9.5ton pilot boat, featuring tunneled propellers, shafts and rudders. The optimizations were undertaken for thrust at design speed of 27.5kn. The boat was free to trim and rise, utilizing an overset grid for high resolution and acceptable turn-around time. Propulsion was taken into account via an actuator disc, balancing resistance and thrust. The geometry of the bare hull and tunnel were varied during the optimizations, using fully-parametric models. A systematic comparison of numerical and experimental data was undertaken. The experiments were conducted with the high-speed carriage at TU Berlin, using a 3.5m fully-appended self-propelled model. The optimizations comprised Design-of-Experiments, deterministic searches, surrogates and global strategies. Substantial improvements were found with variants being more energy-efficient than a representative baseline. The paper discusses modeling, simulations and optimizations along with selected results.