A Numerical Study on the Flow around a Rudder behind Low Speed Full Ship

The development of a high-lift rudder is needed because low speed full ships such as the VLCC(Very Large Crude oil Carrier) have difficulty for obtaining enough lifting force from a common rudder. The rudder of a ship is generally positioned behind the hull and propeller. Therefore, rudder design should consider the interactions between hull, propeller, and rudder. In the present study, the FLUENT code and body fitted mesh systems generated by the GRIDGEN program are adopted for the numerical simulations of flow characteristics around a rudder that is interacting with hull and propeller. Sliding mesh model(SMM) is adopted to analyze the interaction between propeller rotation and wake flow behind hull. Several numerical simulations are performed to compare the interactions such as hull-rudder, propeller-rudder, and hull-propeller-rudder. Also, we consider relationships between the interactions. The results of present numerical simulations show the variation of flow characteristics by the interaction between hull, propeller, and rudder, and these results are compared with an existing experimental result. The present study demonstrates that numerical simulations can be used effectively in the design of high-lift rudder behind low speed full ship.