Numerical Research on the Resistance Reduction of Air Intake

• Main Authors: Lei Du, Hanbing Sun, Yi Jiang, Ping Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-02-01
• Series: Water
• Subjects: air intake; planing trimaran; numerical simulation; camber; air cavity
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/11/2/280

In order to investigate the drag-reducing effect of air intake, forward motion of planing trimaran models in calm water were simulated for Froude numbers ranging from 3.14⁻5.87. The hull body motion is implemented by coupling the fluid solver with motion solver. Numerical results were compared with the experimental data and showed good agreement. Contrastive calculations of models with and without air intake show that the air intake presents evident drag-reducing effect when Froude number is above 4.49, the cambered configuration of air intake could amplify air cavity and thus decrease fractional resistance. CFD incremental studies were subsequently carried out for the camber of air intake, it is found that the model with chamber-shortened air intake shows the worst resistance performance, while enlarging air intake chamber could reduce resistance at Froude numbers between 4.06 and 4.97.