Analysis of the Virtual Towing Tank Accuracy by Means of a New EFD Database

This work introduces to the field of comparisons between the Experimental Fluid Dynamics (EFD) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The ship resistance prediction can be, nowadays, performed by CFD techniques, but the accuracy of the result obtained is not still well identified. The notable absence of an extensive and freely accessible database, where both ships geometry and experimental data are available, induced the scientific community to organize workshops to investigate both the field of Verification and, most importantly, of the Validation (commonly named: V&V). In this work, through the use of an open- source viscous based code (i.e. OpenFOAMv8), and the availability of a significant experimental database, it has been tested a well-consolidated procedure to perform CFD calculations, with the aim to seed a comparative EFD vs. CFD repository which consists of about one-hundred simulations performed for fifteen different hull shapes. The generated repository has been analysed, in order to extract statistical considerations and assess potential correlations between the differences (among CFD calculations and EFD results) and other physical parameters. The main output of this analysis consists in having defined a mean absolute difference between physical and virtual towing tank tests of 3.2% with a standard deviation of 2.17%.