An experimental and numerical study of a high speed planing craft with full-scale validation

During the conceptual design of a high speed craft, the most important element of the process is resistance and drag prediction. To increase efficiency in high speed craft design, the prediction of total resistance must be increasingly accurate. To achieve this objective, model towing tank tests were used. Although testing will always be necessary, the growing field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is gaining interest, considering the experimental costs. This paper investigates both the experimental and numerical methods of total resistance prediction for a high speed hull, including comparison of the trim and sinkage measurements. Additionally, the model tests were compared to CFD methods when considering the numerical ventilation problem (NVP) and were also validated with full-scale test results. It was shown that at high speeds, the numerical solution of the ventilation problem may lead to an erroneous drag reduction of 27%. To overcome this, replacing the air phase with the water phase under the hull provides an efficient solution. For the numerical solutions with Froude number (Fn) > 0.50 after resolving the NVP, the calculated total resistance shows quite good agreement with the experimental data, with a margin of 2.86%.