IIHR’s Ship Hydrodynamics Program

IIHR – Hydroscience & Engineering is one of this nation’s oldest and most preeminent centers for hydraulic engineering, with advanced capabilities in computational modeling, laboratory experiments, and field measurements.  IIHR’s reputation for excellence in experimental and computational ship hydrodynamics is supported in large part by a 60-year relationship with the United States Navy.  During World War II, IIHR conducted research with the Naval Surface Warfare Center on ship resistance, turbulence, and cavitation.  The Office of Naval Research (ONR), founded in 1948, continued this relationship, providing consistent support for four generations of ship hydrodynamics researchers at IIHR.

In the formative years, IIHR director Dr. Hunter Rouse was instrumental in shaping hydraulics into a rigorous engineering discipline firmly based on fundamental fluid mechanics.  ONR supported Rouse’s work on resistance, turbulence and cavitation.  Dr. Louis Landweber, hired by IIHR in 1954, conducted theoretical and experimental research on a wide range of topics, including wave and viscous drag, potential flow, ship vibration, ship roll, conformal mapping, added mass forces and moments, and blockage.  When Dr. VC Patel joined IIHR in 1971, he brought expertise in 3D viscous flow, especially turbulence and numerical methods.  Patel’s research laid the very foundations of viscous and turbulence research in ship hydrodynamics, including fundamentals of viscous wall and wake flows, 3D separation, near wall, roughness, anisotropic turbulence modeling, and the first Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code for ship stern and wakes.

Ship hydrodynamics research has evolved tremendously since then.  For the past 24 years, under the leadership of Dr. Fred Stern, IIHR has been collaborating with the U.S. Navy to revolutionize the process of ship design through Simulation-Based Design (SBD) for superior ship performance.  SBD is accomplished through integrated complementary CFD, Experimental Fluid Dynamics (EFD), and Uncertainty Analysis (UA). IIHR is a world leader in all three areas.  

Current IIHR research focuses on CFDSHIP-IOWA, an unsteady, detached eddy simulation RANS code used by Navy labs and other universities in support of Navy science & technology and research & development. CFDSHIP-IOWA features the most advanced CFD features for free-surface flows, including 6 degrees-of-freedom motions, free surface modeling, turbulence modeling, higher order numerical methods, dynamic overset grids, and high performance computing. IIHR conducts EFD in its 100 meter towing tank, one of the most advanced towing tank facilities in the world with a range of cutting-edge measurement technologies, including towed 3DPIV (particle image velocimetry) for flowfield velocities, planar motion mechanism for maneuvering tests, ship wave pattern mapping capability, six-degrees-of-freedom contactless tracking of ship motions, and a wind generator carriage for simulation of airflow over a ship superstructure. 

Today the IIHR ship hydrodynamics staff is comprised of a team of engineering faculty and research staff, post-doctoral associates, visiting scholars, and graduate and undergraduate students.  Their progress on programs like CFDSHIP-IOWA are helping to meet the needs of a 21^st century Navy and replacing the outdated and expensive “build & test” approach to ship construction. 

Visit the Ship Hydrodynamics web site to learn more about IIHR's Ship Hydrodynamics Program.