Influence of Turbulence Model on the Form Factor Determination of Fishing Vessels

Abstract

Turbulence modeling remains one of the primary sources of uncertainty in CFD, particularly in naval hydrodynamics. To avoid the high computational cost of directly resolving turbulent fluctuations, it is common practice to apply averaging methods and focus on the behavior of the mean flow. This introduces a closure problem in the fluid dynamic equations, which is typically addressed using twoequation models based on turbulent viscosity. In this study, three widely used turbulence models—k-ε, k-ω, and k-ω SST—were employed to perform single-phase simulations, evaluating their influence on the determination of the form factor of ship hulls. Each model was applied to the same set of case studies to assess the sensitivity of the form factor to turbulence modeling and to analyze how this sensitivity varies with Reynolds number in low length-to-beam ratio fishing vessels. This work is part of a broader study on scale effects in power prediction for fishing vessels.