Assessment of the Academic CFD Code Galatea-I With the DARPA SUBOFF Test Case

Abstract

In this study an academic CFD code, named Galatea-I, is presented, capable for simulating inviscid, viscous laminar and viscous turbulent incompressible fluid flows. It employs the RANS (Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes) approach along with the SST (Shear Stress Transport) turbulence model to predict turbulent flow phenomena, such as recirculations and separations of flow, on three-dimensional unstructured hybrid grids, composed of prismatic, tetrahedral and pyramidal elements. Discretization of the governing equations is obtained with a node-centered finite-volume scheme. Parallel processing and agglomeration multigrid scheme are implemented for the acceleration of the numerical process. As the title of this paper reveals, the solver is validated against the test cases of the DARPA SUBOFF program; in particular, flows over the SUBOFF bare hull submarine geometry at two incident angles and the SUBOFF hull with fairwater configuration are examined. The obtained results, compared to available in open literature experimental data as well as results computed by reference solvers, indicate the proposed methodology’s potential to accurately simulate complex fluid flows.