Firstly thanks, John for your information. I'll follow it up!

I am wondering if anyone out there has experience modelling any kind of high speed watercraft- such as powerboats, racing yachts/dinghies etc, and if so how do you go about modeling the free surface of the water as it passes under the hull of the craft? Information on the software you use would also be very helpful!

Thanks in advance for any help,

Best Regards, Adam

(1). If you have time, why not check into the Proceedings of Symposium of Naval Hydrodynamics. (2). The Symposium has been around for many years, and I think, you should be able to get the first hand information.

One simple and powerful method to deal with the numerical simulations of flows around floating bodies with allowance of free-surface wave effects have been around for years.
Its description, numerical details and validation have been published in CFDU reports avialable for on-line ordering via cfdSHOP.
The method is one of the long-established built-in options of PHOENICS code and its shareware package.

Regards

Sergei Zhubrin.

First: what is your interest, seakeeping? resistance minimization? local analysis? Some months ago I tried to study this kind of problems (the objective was resistance minimization), using a home-made code SHYNE (www.cimne.upc.es/shyne). This code uses a transpiration technique in order to impose the free surface boundary condition. I tried to find some literature in CFD-Planing crafts, but unfortunately I cound´t found anything for Froude Numbers above 0.6. Finally I had access to some experimental data from Paris model basin and some success validation could be carried out. However the complex dependency of the trim angle with the velocity (dynamic equilibrium) makes difficult the industrial application of this techniques to high speed planing crafts.

Thankyou all for your info.

The main objectives would be resistance minimisation for windsurf boards at various points of sailing, and obtaining pressure information for the flow under the board.