High-fidelity simulations of the interaction of atmospheric turbulence with ship airwakes

In the present work, the influence of a neutral atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) on a ship airwake is studied. The ship investigated is the Simple Frigate Shape 2 (SFS2), which is immersed into a large-eddy simulation resolved ABL. The ship is modeled using the immersed boundary method (IBM) to allow for complex geometry handling in the context of a Cartesian mesh. Uniform inflow cases are executed as baselines and overall good agreement with both previous CFD results using detached eddy simulation and experimental data from the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) are observed. Comparison of ABL and uniform inflow cases at the same Reynolds number provided insight into the fundamental topology differences present in real airwakes. It is observed that the velocities in a ship airwake are considerably different when exposed to an ABL, and this influence should be taken into consideration for dynamic interface modeling.